on our own
by Bardess of Avon
Summary: Collection of e/e oneshots, most of which are from my tumblr. Chapter fourteen: this is the story of how hard we tried
1. on our own

A/N: Whoo my first Les Mis fic whoooo!

I've been wanting to write something for this fandom for a while and Valentine's Day seemed like a good starter. This is super short and not my best work; I'm still trying to get a feel for writing the Les Mis world, but I hope you like it! It's college AU and Enjonine, so if you have a problem with both or either, don't read!

Since this is my first fic on this fandom, reviews would be greatly appreciated (also because they're just nice)!

Happy Valentine's Day and enjoy!

Disclaimer: I own nothing you see.

* * *

Éponine hates this Valentine's Day.

This Valentine's Day, all of her friends have a date. She isn't surprised when Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta discuss their plans, or when Courfeyrac and Jehan shyly plan their first Valentine's Day together (she thinks it's actually kind of cute), and she even manages to not be surprised when Grantaire casually mentions he's hooking up with a friend with benefits. She expected all that. She even manages to shrug it off when Combeferre, Feuilly, and Bahorel mention that they've managed to find dates. They're reasonably good-looking, entertaining lads.

But you could fairly knock her on her _ass_ when Gavroche blushingly admits that he and his _girlfriend_ are going bowling with their friends on Valentine's Day. Did she mention that he's _ten?_

It doesn't help that her best friend is dating what could possibly be the ultimate epitome of privileged white girl. Marius, who used to make fun of girls like that with her, is still dating Princess Cosette, and Éponine loses her appetite every time they talk about the carriage ride through the park (seriously, who _does_ that anymore?) and candlelit dinner they have planned.

What helps even less is the knowledge that the only other person in Les Amis who doesn't have a date is Enjolras; who, as Grantaire so eloquently put it, is a heartless, soulless robot whose only love—if you could call it that—is attacking the administration.

Éponine ends up spending Thursday afternoon with said heartless, soulless robot, handing out flyers for rape prevention. There are, she supposes, worse ways to spend a Valentine's Day.

But probably not many.

An hour of handing out flyers, bracelets, and condoms passes, Enjolras and Éponine both rattling off gruesome statistics with cheerful faces ("More rapes occur on Valentine's Day than any other day of the year—be safe!"), before he finally rounds on her.

"Ep, why are you doing this?"

She looks at him in confusion. "Doing what?"

He rolls his eyes. "_This_." He gestures to the flyers and the "ONE BILLION RISING" banner. "Spreading rape awareness on the most romantic holiday of the year."

"Because it's also the rapiest holiday of the year and the student body needs to be aware?"

"Ep."

"It is! Look!" She shoved a flyer in his face, as if he didn't know what they said.

"I _mean_, what are you doing…handing out flyers about _rape prevention_ when you could be out having fun?"

"I am having fun," she defended, aware even as she said it how lame she sounded. She forced a smile and elbowed him teasingly. "Besides, I'm hangin' out with one of my best buds!"

"That is an outrageous lie," he deadpanned. "_I'm_ not even having fun."

Éponine passes off flyers to two sorority girls, who promptly throw the papers out, before turning back to Enjolras. "I don't have anything else to do," she says through gritted teeth. "All of my friends have dates. _All of them_. Even my _ten-year-old brother_ has a date. So it's either spread rape awareness or go home and drown my single sorrows in a handle of Absolut."

Enjolras shrugs. "I'm game if you are."

An hour later finds them sitting in her apartment with the biggest box of chocolates Walmart had to offer, a handle of Absolut vodka and _Kill Bill: Volume I_ playing loudly, as if trying to drown out the sound of all the couples fucking around them. Also because her upstairs neighbors are definitely doing the dirty and the walls are thin.

The Bride is taking on the Crazy 88 and Enjolras and Éponine have made noteworthy progress on the chocolates and the vodka when he turns to her. "You know, you could get a date if you wanted to."

She glances at him, surprised at the sudden conversation—Enjolras hates when people talk during movies. "What?"

"You're attractive, you have a charming personality…you didn't have to hand out flyers today."

She knows what he's trying to say and she shrugs. "I know. I mean, thanks, but…I don't know. I wouldn't be interested in whoever it was."

"Because they're not Marius."

She shrugs again, pretending to be absorbed in the blood splattering everywhere. "I guess."

They're quiet for a long moment.

"Why do you like him?"

She turns her hands up helplessly. "Hell if I know. He's not my usual type."

"What's your usual type?" He's curious, because he's only ever seen Éponine trail after Marius; he wonders what boy (or girl) held her attention before.

She actually snorts. "Losers, if my high school boyfriend is any indication." She takes a swig of vodka and shudders a little as it burns its way down her throat. "I'm getting over it, I think. Cosette is trying to be friends, and she's really dumb and super privileged, but…I don't know, she's really nice, too. And you can't just hate someone who's trying so hard to be friends." She pauses. "She and Marius are good together."

They fall silent again. It isn't until they're about ten minutes into _Kill Bill: Volume II_ that Enjolras speaks again. "You deserve better than this."

"I told you, I'm getting over it," she says patiently, watching the massacre at Two Pines.

"No, I mean, _this_." He waves an expansive hand over the room. "Spending your Valentine's Day passing out rape flyers and getting drunk to _Kill Bill_ with, you know, _me_."

She raises an eyebrow. "What do you suggest, since you seem to know what's best for everyone?"

He hesitates, decides it's worth it. "I have an idea." He leans forward and presses his lips very firmly to hers. She allows the kiss to deepen, and she notices that he tastes like bitter chocolate. Before long she is in his lap and the chocolates have fallen on the floor and they are touching each other and _god_ it feels good to have someone.

They end up in her bed and use one of the condoms with a "HAVE A SAFE V-DAY!" wrapper they were passing out earlier. It's fast and it's hard and it's a way to feel better and neither of them pretends it's anything more than that. When it's over, they are relieved to find that neither of them regrets it.

They finish watching the movie as if nothing happened. But the Absolut goes back in the freezer, and after they pick up the chocolates, they keep the box in between them so that they have an excuse not to accidentally touch.

"I should let you sleep," Enjolras says as the credits roll, even though it's barely ten and he knows for a fact Éponine doesn't go to bed before one.

"Oh, yeah." She walks him to the door, hesitates, blurts, "I have more of those condoms."

It's not her best line (_shut up she __knows__ okay_), but he smiles anyway. "Okay."

It's not a carriage ride through the park or a romantic, candlelit dinner…but it's a start.


	2. the ship of dreams

A/N: Hello, lovelies! I wrote this for the 101st anniversary of the _Titanic_ sinking earlier this month on tumblr and I've just now had enough free time to post it here as well. This is a reincarnation fic; everything should be explained, but if you're confused about anything, let me know so I can clear it up! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Nothing you see is mine.

* * *

They have just departed from Cherbourg and she's already lost her brother, the little demon.

"Gavroche!" she shouts, turning down another white hallway. They all look the same to her, and it doesn't help that all the signs are in English. "Gavroche, you little brat, when I find you—"

She runs straight into a very solid object and stumbles back, her head reeling.

"Pardon, I mean, _pardon me, miss_," the voice switches to English.

She raises a hand to stop him. "It's all right, you can speak French," she tells him in their native tongue. She looks up to apologize to the man she ran into and feels her heart skip a beat. "Say, haven't we met somewhere before?"

He looks down at her with blue eyes she has felt pierce her before. A lifetime ago. "I don't know," he says slowly. "I don't think so, but I feel as if I know you…"

"My name's Éponine," she tells him, extending her hand.

"Enjolras." He takes her hand and it happens.

_Look down and see the beggars at your feet._

_Lamarque is ill and fading fast._

_The time is near, so near it's stirring the blood in their veins._

_Red, the blood of angry men._

_Black, the dark of ages past._

_Every word that he says is a dagger in me._

_I love him, but only on my own._

_One more day all on my own._

_One more day before the storm._

_Damn their warnings, damn their lies, they will see the people rise._

_Rain will make the flowers grow._

_She is the first of us to fall upon this barricade._

_Her life was cold and dark, yet she was unafraid._

_Let others rise to take our place until the earth is free!_

They jump apart, visions of Enjolras and a streaming red flag still burning in their minds.

"The barricades," she murmurs.

"The people never rose." He is looking intently at her, in a way he never had when she was Marius's shadow. "Strange that we should meet here, of all places," he muses.

She grins up at him. "It's the Ship of Dreams, m'sieur; anything could happen."

* * *

They recover Gavroche, who is holding his own in a poker game.

"I finally saved up enough to get us away from my parents," she says, watching the eleven-year-old sweep up his winnings with a satisfied smirk. "But what about you? Surely bourgeois boys don't need to escape to the land of opportunity."

"I'm going to attend a convention in New York about social inequality," is his response.

She laughs at him. "Haven't changed a bit, have you?"

* * *

Little by little, they find the others sprinkled among second class. They find Grantaire first, slumming at a third class party with a bottle in his hand. They recover Combeferre in the second-class reading room, poring over textbooks. Courfeyrac and Jehan are found comparing poetry on the deck, Joly and Bossuet are vying for Musichetta's affections (they end the night sharing her in their stateroom, which comes as a surprise to no one), Feuilly is found with a group of Poles, and they have to restrain Bahorel from nearly killing a man who insults France.

Even Marius makes an appearance at one of the parties, descended from first-class with the lovely Cosette wearing his engagement ring. Éponine expects to feel all the old emotions rising up—overwhelming love for Marius, jealousy of Cosette, the need to throw herself off of something to stop feeling.

But she doesn't.

Instead, she turns to Enjolras as the band strikes up another fast Irish ditty. "Dance with me, bourgeois boy."

He takes her hand and lets her spin him around the floor. When she collapses in his arms later that night, drunk with beer and laughter, he cannot help feeling glad it is his arms and not Marius's she found her way into.

* * *

"I wish things had been different before," she tells him when he comes down to the third-class decks the next day.

"What do you mean?"

"I wish I had loved you instead of M'sieur Marius."

He doesn't know what to say, so he kisses her instead. His smooth hands that have never seen a day's work grip her too-thin waist, her fingers snaking into his curls. People glare at this unlikely pair, the _gamine_ and the gentleman, but no one stops them.

They defy anyone to try.

* * *

It's getting late and they should really be getting to bed (but being with each other is so much nicer) when they hear a screeching noise and the deck shudders beneath their feet. The engines stop.

"Something's happened," he says, and he can feel it happening again.

Courfeyrac and Jehan find them a few moments later, out of breath.

"An iceberg," they pant.

Enjolras grips Éponine's hand.

* * *

The ship doesn't stay up long. The bow slips under, water seeping onto the deck and into the corridors. Marius does not stay long; one of the officers allows men on the boat he's filling, so Marius joins Cosette and her father.

Enjolras tries to persuade Éponine and Gavroche to do the same, but they insist on helping families find safety before they even think of their own. It doesn't take long before Gavroche and the other Amis are lost in the swell of the crowd, and soon it is only Éponine and Enjolras.

They hold hands and race up and down the deck, looking for an escape, but there is none anymore: the lifeboats have all gone, save the collapsible tangled in the davits. A final flare shutters in the sky, but there is no response.

"No one's coming," Enjolras chokes.

_The people have not stirred_.

"We'll go to the stern and hang on as long as we can," Éponine decides. "Someone's got to come by then."

They make for the stern, pushing and shoving past crying women and shouting men. But the crowd is too thick and they cannot move any further, so they hook themselves onto what they can as the ship begins to tilt dangerously. The polished deck is smooth, and Éponine begins to slide. Enjolras grabs her hands, his lower body secure, but he is not sure he can pull her up.

"Just hang on," he orders.

She gives him a sad smile. "Don't you fret, m'sieur; we found each other this time, I'm sure we'll find each other again."

"No." His mouth feels dry. "No, Éponine, don't you…don't you talk like that…"

His palms are slick and he can feel her slipping.

"We were going to die one way or another and we both knew that." Only a few fingers are holding her up now. "And you know, m'sieur…I believe I was a little bit in love with you."

And just like that, she is gone.

* * *

The ship plunges into the water not long after, and he does not even fight the cold. If she could live unafraid of the cold and the dark, why shouldn't he die unafraid of it?


	3. my jolly sailor bold

A/N: This chapter is based off _The Little Mermaid_ (the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, not necessarily the Disney movie), but the ending is different because wtf daughters of air. If you have a tumblr, you might have seen this floating around, and if you haven't, you should check it out, because **for-one-shining-moment** made a BEAUTIFUL photoset for this piece! Enjoy!

* * *

_My heart is pierced by Cupid, I disdain all glittering gold,_

_There is nothing can console me but my jolly sailor bold._

She likes the surface more than she likes being under it.

"It's the pirate blood in you," her mother says, twining seaweed in her hair. "You inherited your father's love for the unknown."

Her father's wanderlust is not the only thing she inherited; from her mother, the feared sea-witch, she inherited the ability to be very dark and very desperate.

It is her father's wanderlust that leads her to the ship one night, anchored not far from the shore. They are celebrating the prince's birthday, making toast after toast to Prince Marius and his good health. She catches a glimpse of him in the light from the lanterns and cannot look away from his kind face.

It is her mother's desperation that dives after him when the sudden storm flings him into the ocean. She wraps him in her arms and swims to shore, her red tail flipping harder than it ever has before. He is still unconscious when she lays him out on the sand, so she sings to him a song of healing. His eyes flutter open just as the sun begins to rise. She stops long enough to look into his eyes—_green_—before she turns and disappears into the water.

* * *

She spends the next few weeks pining over the prince. Her sister scorns her for falling in love with a human, and even her mother, from the shadows of her cave, mocks her.

"You're a little fool," she laughs harshly.

"I want to be with him!" the little mermaid snarls.

The witch stops laughing. "You do now, my dear. And for a while, he might want to be with you, too. But sooner or later he'll grow tired of you. That's the way of men."

"This one is different," she whispers.

The witch gives her a rueful smile. "Oh, you little fool. I can give you legs, my dear. But everything has got a little price."

"Yes."

"Your voice."

She is taken aback. Of all the things she thought she would have to promise, this is not one of them. She considers it. Without her voice, she will not be able to sing, and she will certainly not be able to talk to the prince. But surely he will recognize her as his savior and that will be enough.

"All right," she agrees.

The witch gets up from her chair, moving towards her shelves of dark things. "Every step will be painful for you. And if this man marries another, you cannot turn back into a mermaid."

"What will happen instead?" she ventures.

"Instead, you must either stay a human for the rest of your life, or you can throw yourself into the ocean and become sea-foam. Of course, another spell can change all of that, but I wouldn't count on that."

She considers her options. If the prince marries another, her choices are grim. But she is sure he will marry her. After all, she saved his life. "I'll take my chances."

Her mother sighs and hands her a vial of a dark purple liquid. "Go to the shore and drink this. When you wake up, you'll have legs and your voice will be gone."

Any other daughter might embrace her mother at such a moment. But they are not an affectionate pair, so she takes the vial. "Thank you."

And she swims for the surface.

* * *

She goes to the same place on the shore where she brought the prince. She crawls up as far as she is able, her tail dragging pathetically behind her. Well, there will be no more of that after today. She sits up and uncaps the vial. The purple liquid sloshes in the vial, ready to take her voice and her tail.

"Ready or not," she murmurs, knocking back the vial's contents.

* * *

When she wakes up, she is surrounded by a group of men. She recognizes only one—the prince. They flood her with questions—who is she, why is she naked, where did she come from—but she only points to her empty throat. One of the men, a strong ox of a human, pulls off his shirt and wraps her in it before the prince scoops her up and carries her to the palace.

His blond lieutenant follows close behind, wary of the girl from the water.

* * *

The prince dresses her in silk and muslin and gives her the name Éponine. He tells her it suits her, and it makes her heart soar.

Later, his blond lieutenant, Enjolras, mentions that it means "love". This makes her heart soar even higher.

Her mother is right—every step feels like a dagger. Sometimes she even bleeds into her pretty shoes. But she wants so badly to please Marius, so she keeps walking. People stop and stare, for no one has ever walked as gracefully as this strange girl who washed up from the sea.

She dances, too, because Marius likes it. Her feet scream in protest and she always bleeds, but it's always worth it to see his smiles and hear his praise.

* * *

The pain is beginning to dull when the king tells Marius that he must marry the princess across the sea.

"I don't want to marry her," Marius confides to Éponine later that night. "I would rather marry you; you remind me of the girl who saved my life once."

She smiles at him, and the smile does not leave her face as they travel across the sea to the waiting princess. She dreams of a dramatic confrontation, of Marius refusing the beautiful princess and passionately declaring his love for Éponine for all to hear. She dreams of getting her voice back and dancing without pain.

* * *

Marius grumbles about the princess the closer they get to the kingdom, and Enjolras finally snaps.

"Marriages are not about love," he snarls. "Keep your mute girl if you wish, but you must marry the princess regardless of your feelings. That is your _duty_, Your Highness."

The words sting like the knives in Éponine's feet. She cannot cry—mermaids do not cry—so she slaps him instead. His mouth falls open in shock, but she does not stop to revel—she retreats to her cabin and does not leave for the remainder of the voyage.

* * *

Princess Cosette is indeed beautiful, but the scene does not play out as Éponine had hoped. Marius takes the little lark's hands in his and breathes, "I am lost."

"I am found," the princess responds, a smile lighting her whole face.

Éponine feels her heart fall to pieces.

* * *

The wedding is in three days, and Marius does not talk to her once. He sends Enjolras to see to her needs because all his other companions are preoccupied with the wedding and international relations, and after all, Enjolras is the most trustworthy about keeping the prince's little affair quiet. He keeps her in the shadows, and if anyone asks, tells them she is the prince's ward.

She feels like a dirty, disgusting lie as she lets Enjolras pull her away from the princess's entourage. She wishes now, more than ever, that she had her voice—she wants someone, anyone, to know that she is more than just a secret.

* * *

The wedding takes place on a sunny, glorious morning, and as Marius makes his vows, a tear finds its way down Éponine's cheek.

_Will you look at that_, she thinks, too numb with heartache to be surprised. _Mermaids have tears after all_.

* * *

After an initial celebration at the palace, the bridal company make their way aboard the ship and head home. Marius and Cosette have long since disappeared to their cabin, but the celebration continues on deck.

"Do you want to dance?" Enjolras asks, remembering how often Éponine used to dance for the prince.

She shakes her head. She will not dance again, not for Marius or any other human.

* * *

The celebrating comes to an end late in the night, but Éponine does not go to bed. She sits by the edge of the ship, watching the waves and feeling her heart ache—whether from Marius or because she misses the sea, she does not know.

Without warning, a head and white shoulders rise from the surface. It is her sister, but her beautiful hair has been cut short.

"I know what has happened to you," she says urgently. "I know the prince chose another. Our mother gave me this knife in exchange for my hair." Her hand comes out from the water, clutching a knife with a gold hilt. "Kill the prince and his woman, and then throw this knife into the water with their blood on it; when you dive in after it, you will be a mermaid again and you will have your voice back."

It sounds like the solution to everything. She takes the knife from her sister and, seeing that no one else is watching, slips into the prince's cabin. She sees them curled together on the bed, their chests rising and falling as they breathe gently.

She raises the knife, ready to stab the princess first…but her hand falters.

If she kills them both and returns to the ocean, she will never be happy; she will always have their blood on her hands.

_He betrayed you_.

She grips the knife tighter.

_You love him_.

It is that thought that stays her hand, the reminder that whether he lives or dies, she loves him.

If she had a voice, she would cry out.

Instead, she runs out of their cabin and back to the side of the ship. She flings the knife into the waves and, on trembling legs and holding fast to the rigging, climbs the railing—if she cannot have him, she is not going to waste another moment in his world. She takes a deep breath—her last one—and lets go of the rigging.

But she does not fall as she expected to. Instead, a strong pair of arms grab her and pluck her back down onto the deck. She turns to look at her captor and finds herself staring into blue eyes.

Enjolras.

"He's not worth it," he says, his voice harsh. "He's a fool, and you're even worse if you think he's worth your life."

She blinks up at him, and there is so much she wishes she could say.

_Don't you understand, you petty human? This is my prison, and the water is my escape. _

"Éponine," he sighs, and he suddenly sounds so tired. "There is so much more to this world than Marius."

The second tear of the day trickles down her cheek, and then another, and then another, and somehow she is crying. He sighs and folds her in his arms, tucking her head against his chest as she shivers with the first cry she's ever had.

"Stay in this world, Éponine," he murmurs. "If not for yourself, then for me."

If she had a voice, she would tell him she hardly knows him, much less would stay alive for him.

But there is something about his plea that strikes her. Perhaps it's because he is not Marius. Perhaps it's because his eyes remind her of the sea. Or perhaps it is because he was the only one who saw her drowning.

Whatever the reason, she finds herself nodding.

And perhaps it's just the sun creeping up over the horizon, but nothing could be handsomer than his smile.


	4. paradise lost: part i

A/N: This is a two-parter; I'll have the second part uploaded soon. This was largely inspired by **unicornesque**'s _Season Unending_; **ThinksInWords** was awesome and beta'd it for me. If you check it out on tumblr (my url is **wittygirls**), you can see the amazing graphic that **joly-poly** over there made for me!

Enjoy!

* * *

_"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of a heaven" _

_― John Milton, Paradise Lost_

They are the Grigori—the Watchers, men call them. They do on earth what the Creator cannot, whether it is settling small disputes or interpreting prophetic dreams. There are two hundred of them, each one gifted in his own way. Many teach signs; signs of the clouds, the sun, the moon, the earth. Others teach more useful skills, such as the creation of weaponry and writing with ink and paper. There is one who teaches the children of men the bitter and sweet secrets of wisdom.

Enjolras has a quick and judicious eye, and this is the gift he passes onto Man.

"Look here," he says to the quarreling farmers, and their wives and children gather 'round. "There is no dispute so great it will follow you into the life after life. Is this cow really worth so much to you? Then slaughter it and share it, and remember that you are neighbors."

Other men and their families soon call upon him to settle their disputes. Enjolras determines what is fair and what is just, and teaches men to do the same.

"You must do what is best for all of Man," he says time and time again.

It heartens him when they walk away as friends, their lesson learned and their hearts unhardened.

But as the years pass and more men come to him with every problem imaginable, he feels less and less reassured.

"There is so much wickedness in men," he laments to the others in his order. "I know they are capable of goodness, but I see less and less of it every day."

There are many who tell him to keep the faith, he is doing their Father's work. But one of his brothers, Grantaire, an angel who too often partakes in the earthly pleasures of men, laughs at him. "And who do you think first brought wickedness to men?" he challenges with a wine-stained smirk. "And who is it, do you think, who brings wickedness to them still?"

"Your mind is addled with the vine, Grantaire," Combeferre tells him, his sharp eyes looking to the skies.

In a shadow-filled corner, the angel's laugh becomes a murmur. "He condemned us as soon as He created us."

* * *

A hundred years pass, and with them pass the goodness of men. Enjolras sees neighbors steal from one another, even murder one another. He sees tribes go to war with one another for land and for glory and for other gods. The Grigori, restless on earth, begin to share their forbidden knowledge with men; heavenly secrets soon become market gossip.

"I do not see the harm in it," Samyaza insists—he shares many secrets with the human wife he has taken.

"You may not now, but remember that there was one before you who shared secrets with men," Combeferre warns.

They all know who he's talking about. Lucifer, the beloved brother, who fell because of the things he whispered in the first woman's ear.

_How little things change_, Enjolras reflects.

Samyaza is not the only angel to take a wife; many of them do. The daughters of men are beautiful and different from anything in Heaven. The children of these unions are curious to behold; the daughters are pale, lovely creatures, and the sons are giants. Nephilim, they are called.

"This is wrong," Combeferre mutters when Baraquel announces the birth of another son.

"To love is wrong?" Joly, who shares a woman with Bossuet, challenges. "Have we not been taught that to love is to understand Our Father?"

Enjolras opens his mouth to answer, but Grantaire beats him to it. "We will never understand Him; that is why it is wrong to love."

* * *

She comes to him in the early dawn of her womanhood. She is tall and gangly for her age and her limbs stick out at awkward angles, but her dark hair hangs down to her waist and her round face holds the promise of beauty. Her father and another man are quarreling, and she has been summoned to fetch him. He follows her, for no matter how weary he is with men and their quarrels, he is even more invigorated by ending them. He almost doesn't pay attention to the shadow of a girl beside him—men are either very eager to thrust their daughters at the Grigori or very keen to keep them away from them, and Enjolras has found that it's simply easier to avoid unmarried girls altogether—when she turns to him and asks without preamble, "Is it true what they say? That the life after this never ends?"

"It is true," he says, a little startled. It was probably a secret once, long ago, but there are few things the Grigori can keep secret from men these days.

"Even to the end of days?" she presses, brown eyes boring into his blue ones.

He looks away as another loosely-guarded secret falls from his lips. "There is only an earthly end to days; in Heaven, there is no end."

She considers. "And what happens, in this life without end?"

He walks a little ahead of her. "That is a question I cannot answer, daughter."

She runs to catch up with him. "Cannot, or will not?"

"Éponine," he warns.

She ducks her head and mumbles an apology, and that is the end of the matter.

* * *

Their paths do not cross again for a few more years. He sees her now and again in the market, running errands for her father or tending to her flock of younger siblings, but they never exchange more than passing nods. He catches glimpses of her here and there, and piece by piece, he sees her becoming a woman.

It is the woman Éponine who buries her two youngest brothers when they catch fever. Her mother and father pay for the embalming and beat their breasts and tear their clothes as is expected, but it is Éponine who selects which toys of theirs follow them into the tomb. It is Éponine who leaves a candle inside the dark cave because the little boys were always afraid of the dark. While the Grigori sing their melodious songs of mourning, Éponine holds her only living brother left close and whispers the lullabies she sang at his cradle—though whether she sings for him or for the boys in the tomb, no one knows. Her sister, almost a woman herself, takes the boy away when the other mourners leave, but Éponine stays by the tomb.

Enjolras does not want to leave her alone, not when there is that dead and empty look in her eyes, and that is how he finds himself at her side for the second time.

"They are with Our Father now," he murmurs, which is the only consolation he knows to give.

"Yes." She is quiet for a moment. "Do you remember when I came for you all those years ago, Grigori? I asked you about the life after life."

"I remember."

"You wouldn't tell me what happened."

"It is not for the living—"

"I want to know," her voice cracks, "what's happening to my brothers."

He is quiet for a long moment. "I have never died," he finally says, slowly. "But…I am told that there is no pain. Only light. The body is made new and whole; all wounds healed, all blemishes removed. And you are taken across a silver lake by a boat. A heavenly host welcomes you, and you are reunited with loved ones. At least, that is what I have been told. Your brothers are at peace, daughter, as should you be."

She makes a small _tuh!_ noise and mutters, "_Be at peace_." Then, louder, she asks, "But what do you _do_ there, in the garden of the Lord? It goes without end, you said before. What do we do in these infinite days?"

"You welcome the newcomers and sing the praises of the Lord," he recites as he has been taught.

Her brow furrows. "Forever?"

"Well, yes." He sees her hesitance and hurries, "It seems very long and perhaps very dull now, but it will not when you are there. Every hour is more wonderful than the last."

Her next question surprises him. "Is anyone unhappy in Heaven? Is there any discontent?"

"No, of course not." But something in the back of his mind whispers, _Yes. There were many who were discontent. One third of the angels fell with Lucifer._

"And is everyone so happy because Heaven is really so wonderful, or is it because they have no choice?" She turns flashing eyes on him, and he finds that for once, he does not know the answer.

He knows what he _should_ answer, of course…but he also knows that he is not supposed to lie.

He bows his head.

"It's strange. The Lord created us to serve him in this life, and we're told we're rewarded for this service in the next life, but our _reward_ is more servitude."

"Love of your creator is not servitude," he says, sharper than he intends to.

"I did not ask to be created, and I did not ask to spend eternity being reminded of it." Her breath hitches and the fire in her eyes smolders into ashes. "Forgive me," she murmurs, dropping her head. "I'm very tired. All of this…" She struggles for words for another moment before giving up and running away.

* * *

Six more months pass before they speak again. By now, the number of Grigori married to the daughters of men outnumber those who remain pure; add this to the number of Nephilim and daughters of angels who marry the sons and daughters of men, and there are few men left without heavenly blood coursing through their veins.

They are celebrating the union of Marius, one of his order, and Cosette, the daughter of an angel and a daughter of men, when Enjolras sees Grantaire and Éponine sitting in a corner. They are laughing over their cups of wine, which is all very well—until he sees Grantaire rest a hand on her leg.

_She is a maiden and he is an angel and you are only protecting her_ is what he tells himself as he approaches in a flurry of white robes and feathered wings. "Brother, you look as if you have indulged in too much of the vine; perhaps it would serve you well to take a walk in the night air."

Grantaire opens his mouth to argue, but then a look of realization crosses his face. He smirks as he rises to his feet. "Yes, perhaps a walk would serve _me_ well." He winks and disappears.

"I hope he was not bothering you," Enjolras says sincerely.

Éponine raises an eyebrow, swirling a finger around the rim of her cup. "No, I enjoyed his company."

He feels foolish. "You should be more careful around angels, especially those known to partake in earthly pleasures." He turns to go to save himself further embarrassment.

"Why?" she throws at him before he can escape. "I thought it was your duty to guide and protect us. Why should _I_ be more careful around those sent to care for _me_?"

"Why do you always ask such infernal questions?!" he exclaims, turning around.

She pauses for a moment before smiling. "You have all the answers."

He absolutely cannot argue with this logic, and his frustration makes her laugh. "Come dance with me, son of Heaven."

He shakes his head. "I cannot."

She stands on her toes and rests her fingers against his cheek. "You may be a son of Heaven, but your home is here. Enjoy it."

He hesitates for another moment, and it is all the encouragement she needs to pull him out to the circle of dancers. The wedding party is full of angels and their children, more graceful than any child of earth, but he cannot take his eyes off this daughter of men as she twists and turns and bends. She smiles at him over her shoulder, and this son of Heaven is lost.

* * *

This is how an angel falls.

* * *

He finds himself at her side more often than not, though who seeks who out is never certain. She always asks questions and he always tells her he can't answer them, but she ends up finding out what she wants to know anyway.

"And Yahweh forgives _all_ sins?" she demands, plucking up a wildflower and twirling it between her fingers.

"Yes," he says suspiciously, because this is far less complicated than the questions she usually asks.

"_All_ of them? There is not one He will not forgive?" she challenges.

He feels a shadow of something creeping into his heart. The reminder of brothers once loved and gone now.

"You're quiet."

He doesn't look at her. "There is one sin."

She looks at him expectantly.

"To take one's own life is the only unforgivable sin."

She considers this. "I wonder why."

He glances at her. "What?"

"I wonder why," she repeats. "A man can be forgiven for killing another man, but not for killing himself."

It occurs to him that it _is_ strange, and yet again, he does not have the answer. This has been happening more and more often lately, and it's starting to leave him with a frustrated feeling. He is a servant of the Great I Am, the Lord and Creator, and yet he knows so little.

"You ask too many questions," he says, which is what he always says when he doesn't know how to answer her.

She smiles at him impishly. "I ask what everyone wonders but is too afraid to voice. All men are curious."

"Really."

"Yes." She lies back on the grass. "Why else do you think Eve ate the forbidden fruit?"

"Eve ate the forbidden fruit because Lucifer told her to." _Eat, daughter, and be free_.

"And it gave her and all of mankind free will, didn't it?" The sun reveals itself from the clouds it was hiding behind and Éponine closes her eyes. "He was doing a kindness, real—"

"You should not speak that way of him." Enjolras says it quietly but firmly, keeping his eyes focused on the trees ahead of him.

She is quiet for a long moment. "Did you know him?" she finally asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Yes." He pauses. "The angels are like brothers, and he was the most beautiful, most beloved of us all. No one loved Adam and Eve more than he, save Our Father."

She rolls onto her side and props herself up with one elbow. "Then why are we taught to revile him?"

He sighs. "He disobeyed Our Father. He spoke often of freeing them. He said it was cruel to create them only to blind them. One day he appeared to them as a serpent and convinced them to eat the forbidden fruit. Our Father was furious…the fight went on for days. Lucifer demanded that angels be treated as gods, and when he was denied, he led a rebellion of angels against Our Father's forces. Our Father finally cast them out and sentenced them to Tartarus."

She looks like she wants to ask more about the fallen morning star, but her little brother chooses that moment to come stumbling into the clearing. "Azelma sent me to find you, she said you've been gone all afternoon and it's time to come home…"

"She's one to complain." But Éponine rises anyway. "I want an answer for my question, Grigori," she says with a smile, and then she is gone.

* * *

He knows she was only teasing, but he ponders her question anyway, because it bothers him that anything could be unanswerable.

But this seems to be the only truly unanswerable question. Why _is_ it a greater crime to kill oneself than to kill another? To kill another means to care nothing for that other life, to throw it away. To kill oneself at least requires emotion. _It doesn't make sense_.

He ponders it for three days and nights. He rewords it every way he knows how and still cannot make sense of it.

And that is how he finds himself sitting with Grantaire—for if there is anyone who will give him an answer he does not want, it is this creature.

"You still have not figured it out yet, have you?" the other Grigori snorts. "After all this time, you still believe everything you have been told is true…"

"Just tell me—"

"I _am_ telling you!" His eyes flash. "Think, brother. When a man kills another man, the man who was killed did no wrong. He can still go to Heaven. And the man who did the killing can still beg for forgiveness. He may not be granted it, but he can still throw himself at the Lord's mercy. If a man kills himself…well, he is the killer and the killed. He cannot throw himself at anyone's mercy but his own."

A faint something begins to take shape in Enjolras's mind.

"He is at his own mercy…" he tries, grasping at straws.

"_His own_." Grantaire takes a swig from his wineskin. "Not the Lord's. His own."

The faint something becomes an answer.

"Do you see now, brother? It is unforgivable because it is the only way a man can free himself. Because none of them are free, on earth or in Heaven. And neither are we." He takes another swig. "Our Father was very _generous_, granting mortals free will, but no one talks about the part where disobeying him leads to damnation."

There is a faint humming in Enjolras's ears. It all makes sense now. Everything he has turned from is now staring him in the face and he cannot look away. He does not want to.

"Now you see." Grantaire hands him the wineskin, and for once, the blue-eyed angel accepts it. It tastes bitter and sweet on his tongue all at the same time.

"Lucifer," he sputters, handing the wineskin back.

"He figured it out long before we did."

The fallen brother rises in Enjolras's mind. He gets up, moves to leave.

"We are all condemned, Enjolras," Grantaire calls after him. "You understand that?"

He nods once, curtly. "Yes." And then he leaves to try to save one.

* * *

He finds her in the orchards long after the other women have left, plucking figs from the trees and into her basket. She smiles at him, that charming, commanding smile, but it fades when she sees his grim expression. "What…?"

"Do you want to know why ending your own life is the one unforgivable sin?" he demands of her.

"I—"

He grips her thin shoulders, causing her to drop her basket. "It is because it is the one thing you can control."

Her brown eyes stare up at him, wide with everything that one sentence tells her.

"You are born into this life, and you are told that if you serve him to the best of your ability, you are rewarded in death, but when you pass to Heaven your mind is given to Him and you lose all control of it. We have always been told Hell is a place of suffering and despair, but of course He would say that, He does not want anyone to be where He cannot control them."

She quivers in his hands. "So Hell…?"

He shakes his head. "It is just another place. I had always wondered: why would Lucifer punish those who were not with the Lord?"

"He wouldn't," she realizes. "He would be happy they were with him."

"Yes." He catches a lock of her hair between her fingers.

"And what about you?" she asks. "I can't imagine Yahweh will be very pleased you've come to this realization."

He gives her a wry smile. "I am going to be cast out of Heaven for this." He realizes now that the other Grigori have accepted this long ago, that that is why they drink wine and marry the daughters of men who bear their children. They will never be allowed back into Heaven, so they are making their homes on earth.

She takes his hand and, without taking her brown eyes off his blue ones, rests it on her breast. "Then let me be cast out with you."

He swoops down to capture her mouth and she sighs against him, pulling him down, down, down…

They fall together amidst shed clothes and scattered figs and the flutter of angel's wings.


	5. paradise lost: part ii

A/N: Hello lovelies! Here's part two; I hope you enjoy!

* * *

"Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult."

- Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

"It is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live."

- Victor Hugo, _Les Misérables,_ Volume 5, Book 9

* * *

The orchard becomes their sanctuary. They wait until the late afternoon, when the orchards are empty and no one will find them, and it becomes theirs. When they lie tangled in one another's arms, after, she still asks him questions, and in exchange she shares secrets of her own. He becomes assured that he loves this woman, that she alone is worth his inevitable fall.

A week goes by like this, and then one day she stumbles into the orchards with tears streaming down her face. "My father is making me marry Lael," she sobs against his chest.

Lael is one of the Nephilim, and not one of the gentler ones. Enjolras does not doubt that some manner of bodily harm was threatened if she was not promised to him. He also does not doubt that such threats will dissuade her father from giving her to another…even an angel. Marrying your daughter to an angel is considered an honor these days, especially since there are so few unwed Grigori left, but honor is worth little when you are dead at the hands of a giant.

"When are you…?" he croaks, unable to finish.

"In a week." She tips back her head to look at him. "I can't marry him, Enjolras. It's you I love."

"Hush," he tells her, rocking her gently in his arms. "I will speak with your father."

She scoffs against him. "And say what?"

She has a talent, he decides mournfully, for asking questions he doesn't have an answer to.

* * *

Éponine's father, predictably, will not give her over to Enjolras.

"If it were a matter of the bride price, I would be more than happy to negotiate with you," he swears. "The accursed giant didn't offer me nearly enough to make up for her loss. But he'll bash my brains in if I don't give her to him." When he sees the mournful look on Enjolras's face, he sighs and says, "He's not what you'd call a _reasonable_ man, but you might try talking to him about it."

And because he has nothing to lose, Enjolras does.

The giant laughs in his face.

"Give her to you? You're mad."

"I love her," Enjolras protests, weakly.

"And I want her as my wife, so you've got a bit of a problem, haven't you?" Lael sneers.

"I will compensate you—"

"With what? Gold? _Jewels_? Livestock, even? No, my father spoke of the Grigori like you; you don't believe in keeping earthly goods. You don't have anything." He bends down to Enjolras's height. "Now leave. I don't care if you are a servant of the Lord. You're annoying me and I don't like you."

He could kill him right now, if he wanted to. Or strike him down with illness, or set a plague on his livestock, or set some misfortune on Lael, some way to ensure that he can't have Éponine and that the rest of his life is miserable.

But he doesn't. The earth is his home now, and he's going to win her by earth's rules.

* * *

"He would not listen to reason; I think he would have tried to kill me if I were not immortal," Enjolras relates later in the orchard.

Éponine has been peculiarly quiet this whole time. She sits with her hands in her lap, staring at the ground. As he finishes, she lets out a small sigh. "And that's it? He won't even yield to a servant of the Lord."

"He was raised by an angel who forsook his vows; I doubt he has very much respect for one who held onto them for so long." He reaches for her hand. "We _will_ find another way."

Her eyes look dead and empty. "What other way? Unless he dies, or sends me away, I'm his, and then it would be shameful for you to marry me."

"We will find another way," he repeats, because he's tired of not having the answer.

When she doesn't say anything, he takes her in his arms and presses hot kisses to her neck and cheeks. "Do you hear me, my moon and stars? We will find a way."

She sighs and sinks into his embrace.

* * *

He sees her in the market the following day, carrying a covered basket. He isn't sure whether or not he should acknowledge her—before, he didn't give it a second thought, but now that she's promised to Lael, he can't be sure—when she sees him and, with a smile, hurries over to him.

"I found another way," she says, holding up the covered basket.

He furrows his brow. "What is it?"

"You'll see. Meet me in the orchard as soon as you can." And she rushes off.

No sooner has she left than Lael storms up to him. "I saw you talking to my wife," he thunders.

"No harm was meant, _friend_; she was only showing me her basket," he promises.

Instead of taking further offense, Lael nods and strokes his beard. "Yes, a strange thing."

Enjolras frowns. "What was?"

"Didn't she tell you? She asked for an early wedding gift; asked for one of the snake charmer's serpents."

His stomach drops. "No…"

"Oh, yes. Seemed very keen to have it. It was a strange request, but it pleased her."

Enjolras takes off for the orchard as fast as his wings will carry him.

* * *

_"I am half sick of shadows," said_

_The Lady of Shalott._

* * *

She's sitting against a fig tree, the basket by her side when he arrives.

"Éponine!" he cries. _It's not too late, _he thinks. _She's still alive_.

And then she looks at him and he knows it is.

"Éponine, _NO_!" he screams, loud enough to shake the ground.

She throws the cover off the basket and plunges her hand inside. She withdraws with a cry, two puncture marks on her wrist. A black serpent slithers out of the basket and into the grass.

"Éponine, you fool, you infernal little fool!" He cradles her in his arms, rocking her back and forth against his chest. In the distance, he can hear the flutter of wings—the Grigori, summoned by his cry.

"There _is _another way," she whispers, and he can feel her growing colder against him. "Don't you see? I chose my own path." She takes in a shuddering breath. "He can't control what happens to me now."

It doesn't matter who she's talking about anymore. Enjolras brushes the hair from her forehead. "I will find you," he vows, his voice shaking.

A smile makes its way across her pale lips. She looks as if she wants to say something, but her stomach convulses and her eyes close in pain. The convulsion passes and her face smoothes, but her eyes do not open again.

In the shade of the orchard, unearthly voices rise in mourning.

* * *

Men and women who take their own lives are not granted burial or mourning rites. Their bodies are thrown into a gorge in the mountains, their names stricken from every record in shame.

Enjolras takes Éponine's body, and no one cares enough to stop him. He carries her deep into the mountains, where men never set foot, and lays her body to rest in a cave. He mourns in the mountains for forty days and nights, and when he returns to the village of men, it is as if she never existed. Everyone walks and talks and the days turn into nights and the nights turn into days, all without anyone ever acknowledging that the girl Éponine was ever a part of this world. He becomes angry and bitter and shares wine by the bucketful with Grantaire.

He's returning from the market one afternoon when he hears a commotion. He turns down a row of houses and sees the drunkard Kal threatening another man. They are disagreeing over something, the other man shaking his head while Kal gestures wildly. Without warning, Kal thrusts a knife from his belt into the other man's chest and watches as he falls back into the arms of his family.

Enjolras does not wait even a moment for Kal to wipe the blade. He storms forward, parting the crowd like water, and grips Kal's shoulder with an iron grip. "On your knees," he growls.

Kal looks at the hand, weaving, and then up at the hand's owner. His face pales.

"On your knees," Enjolras repeats. When Kal does not move, he bends the thick man like a reed and makes him kneel in the mud. "I will give you enough time, you pitiful excuse for a man, to beg your creator's forgiveness."

"Grigori, please, have mercy!" Kal blubbers.

"It is not I who you need beg for mercy." Enjolras squeezes the shoulder of the man, and his shuddered sigh is his last before he falls into the mud.

The air is still for a long, painful moment.

And then the crows are cawing overhead and the crowd is murmuring, and Enjolras leaves in a flutter of wings.

It is the first murder by a son of Heaven.

* * *

The Grigori do not go unpunished for breaking their vows. Their "generous" Father forces them to watch as Gabriel, on his Father's command, starts a war between men and the Nephilim. They watch from the skies as the Nephilim, turned into savages, turn on the children of men. Weapons clash, blood is shed, homes burned, women carried from their beds and made slaves by their captors. The Grigori watch their wives and daughters raped, their sons killed. Enjolras watches Éponine's mother die, her sister captured and made the slave of Lael, her brother killed by relentless Nephilim. Only her father escapes, crawling away like the snake he is.

The war ends when the Nephilim, too large to hide out, are starving and frustrated. They turn on one another, bickering over a fault in leadership; the arguing escalates, and in two days' time, the Nephilim cease to exist.

The Lord sentences the Grigori to the valleys of the earth until the day of judgment, when they will be cast in the fiery abyss. And Grantaire, speaking for all of them, says, "Give us the abyss."

Javert, archangel of order and light, is the one who swings the flaming sword. One by one, their angel's wings are torn from their backs and they are thrown into Tartarus. It is a dark castle with high walls, surrounded by a river of blue fire. They are greeted by Lucifer, who, after all these years, still remembers their names and their gifts, still embraces them as brothers. He holds a feast for them that night and presents all two hundred Grigori with a gift.

They are simple but unique gifts—to Azazel, he presents a sword; to Kokabiel, he gives command of a legion of demons; to Grantaire, wine pressed in Tartarus; to Prouvaire, a golden lyre. When he reaches Enjolras, he motions to one of his demons, and he returns leading a girl clad in white.

Enjolras rises so suddenly that his chair falls back.

_Éponine._

She beams at him, and he crosses the chamber in three strides before catching her and holding her tight against him. "Say something," he commands, burying his face in her hair.

"What would you like me to say?"

He makes a strangled sort of sobbing noise. "You and your questions."

"You found me," she murmurs.

"I said I would."

She pulls back and smiles at him. "Come; there are some things I want to ask you."

"Be at peace, woman, I have only just arrived!" he laughs, following her into hallways of black marble and blue flame.

"Yes, but I spent nearly a year without you, and you must repent by telling me everything I have ever wanted to know."

And because they have all of eternity, he does.


	6. into darkness

A/N: I did this for a prompt on tumblr; the prompt was "Are you challenging me?" Warnings for _Star Trek._

* * *

"How was the movie?" Enjolras asks as Éponine comes through the door.

She smiles and kisses his cheek. "It was great, even though they whitewashed Khan."

"Is that that Benedict Cumbersome—"

"Cumberbatch."

"—whatever, guy you got so worked up about?"

She cracks open a beer from the fridge (canned, a fact which never ceases to bother Enjolras). "Yes, and all I'm saying is they picked a POC in a 1960s TV series for a reason. But whitewashing aside, it was good."

He hums, scrolling down the online article he's reading. "Maybe I'll go see it when the crowds have thinned out."

He looks up expecting to receive a grateful smile or some kind of praise for being a good boyfriend, but he's rather disconcerted to see a smirk Éponine is trying (and failing) to hide.

"What?" he demands rather self-consciously.

"Nothing," she replies far too quickly to be serious.

"No, really, what?"

She takes her time answering him, taking two long gulps of beer first. "It's just…you're not really into _Star Trek_."

"Lots of people go see movies for fandoms they weren't originally part of," he points out.

She doesn't meet his eye. "Well, I don't really know if you'd _like_ it."

"You just said it was a good movie," he reminds her with a touch of exasperation. "Can't I enjoy a movie without having to understand the entire universe around it?"

Éponine rolls her eyes. "You could. But you would be forbidden from talking about it in front of me and Grantaire."

"_Why_?"

She slurps from her beer, less patient with him now. "'Cause me and Grantaire have been Trekkies since we were kids. It's like a really big deal for us. And then to have this guy who doesn't even know what a Tribble is show up and add his opinion—and we all know you're going to give an opinion—on the movie is kind of shitty."

She makes a fair point—he is forcefully reminded of unwanted commentary on his speeches or his social justice articles online from idiots who took Sociology 101 and think that gives them the right to tell him how much they disagree with him. It would be a lot easier to admit defeat, but Enjolras never admits defeat even when he should. "Okay," he says, setting aside his laptop. "Well, what if I became a fan? Obviously it will be difficult to reach your and Grantaire's level of devotion, but at least I can absorb enough to appreciate the movie and discuss it with you two without sounding like an idiot."

She actually laughs so hard that she falls onto the floor. "You want to become a _Trekkie_?" she wheezes from his feet. "You realize there are six different TV series and this makes the franchise's twelfth film?"

He feels his resolve waver at the idea of all the things he's going to have to watch, but he just fixes her with a cold look. "Are you challenging me?"

Her lips curl into a smirk. "Yes."

"Your challenge is accepted," he informs her.

Her hand wanders up his leg. "I like how you get when you're determined."

"Not now, Éponine," he says, parking his laptop in his lap. "I have a lot of _Star Trek_ to watch."

* * *

Enjolras spends the ensuing two weeks parked in front of his laptop, only able to afford to do so because it's summer. He hates himself during the original series because as many strides as they made with so many POC actors, they took very little strides with their acting. At least he finally understands what a Tribble is. The animated series is awful, but his interest begins to pique at _The Next Generation_. He flies through it, only stopping to eat and take the occasional shower. By the time he finishes _Deep Space Nine_ Éponine is extremely sexually frustrated, and she has to physically pull him away from his laptop before he can start _Voyager_ and before she kills something in a sexless frenzy.

When he finishes _Enterprise_, Grantaire comes over and watches all the movies with him and Éponine. They're not all great (he doesn't understand the whales), but he can't stop pushing in the DVDs. He reads up on _Star Trek_ when he has the time, even goes so far as to try to become a "real fan" by reading some Spock/Kirk fanfiction. He regrets the last one.

Éponine comes home from work one day to find her boyfriend sitting in front of the TV, wearing a red sweater with the Starfleet insignia. He turns to her with eyes that haven't slept in a long time and smiles. "_nuqneH_."

She stares at him. "'Ras, I think you've been spending too much time watching _Star Trek_."

"_yIDoghQo_," he says, grinning at her maniacally.

Something clicks and she narrows her eyes. "Enjolras. Are you speaking fucking Klingon?"

"_HIja'_!"

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "If I take you to the new movie will all of this stop? _And do not answer me in Klingon_."

"_ie_."

"I said no Klingon!"

"That wasn't Klingon," he explains with maddening patience. "That was Romulan."

Éponine tries very hard not to rip out her hair.

* * *

They go see _Into Darkness_, and Grantaire comes too because he's dying to see the new Enjolras watch it.

The newest fan watches the movie in complete silence, his blue eyes wide as he takes in everything. Éponine and Grantaire try to catch glimpses of his facial expressions, but they're too distracted by the movie to get a good idea of how he feels.

They wait until they are out of the theater and in the car driving home to discuss the movie.

"So, Enjolras," Grantaire begins with a smirk. "What did you think of the new movie?"

"It was good," Enjolras says, and does not elaborate.

They stare at him for a long moment.

"Just…good?" Éponine questions.

"I had my issues with it, of course, but it was overall a good film."

Grantaire throws his hands up in exasperation. "Like what issues?"

Enjolras hesitates. "Well, the whitewashing, for one. I mean I realize Ricardo Montelban isn't Indian himself but he was at least a man of color whereas Benedict Cumberbatch is not, and POC casting wasn't an accident in the 1960s. And of course there's the whole dynamic of Spock and Uhura's relationship—clearly catering to the fanbase. And—"

And he's off, analyzing the movie to the most miniscule detail, taking it apart piece by piece and somehow managing to weave it all back together.

"…so I would say that Abrams is largely trying to cater to the older fans of the franchise while staying true to the alternate universe he's created, but it's a tricky formula and I think he was taking a bit of a risk there."

He pulls up in front of Grantaire's apartment and turns to look at the other two; they are staring back at him, mouths hanging open.

"…what?" he asks, suddenly terrified he's doing the exact thing he said he wouldn't do. After all, they've been fans for longer, and what does he know, really…

"Dude. You should speak at the next convention." And with this blessing, Grantaire claps him on the shoulder and clambers out of the car.

Enjolras glances at Éponine. "I don't understand."

She shakes her head, smiling. "I don't either. I knew you were getting into it, but…jesus, you have actually devoted your life to this, haven't you?"

He pulls out of the parking lot, shrugging. "I said I would become a fan, didn't I?"

"Well, yeah, but me and Grantaire are fans, and neither of us could have ever come up with something like…that. It's like you majored in _Star Trek_ and that was your graduate's thesis."

He would like to be a gracious winner, but he can't help shooting her a smirk. "You'll think next time you want to challenge me, won't you?"

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, I will never again underestimate your ability to learn a made-up language in less than a week." She reaches for the radio. "So, what are you going to do now that it's over?"

"Go back to social justice, of course." He's been gone for two weeks, god knows what kind of injustices need his help.

She fiddles with the volume for a moment longer than is strictly necessary. "So there's nothing else you, uh, want to become _better_ at?"

"Uh…no?" It hits him and his head whips towards her. "Why? Do I need to?" he asks in alarm.

"Hmm? Oh, no," she says rather unconvincingly. He pulls into his usual parking space, turning off the ignition, and she hops out of the car. "But there are certainly areas where you could improve," she says with a sly grin.

He schools his features into an expression of seriousness. "Are you challenging me?"

She nods once and slams the car door, shrieking with laughter as he chases her up the stairs.


	7. white noise

A/N: Another prompt, this time insanity. Trigger warnings for mental illness and suicide. I really hope I've done the mental illness justice; I was a psych major for a very short period of time, but if you feel that I've misrepresented schizophrenia in any way, I cannot apologize enough.

Thanks everyone who's been adding this to their favorites/alerts; you guys are amazing!

* * *

"_Of course it's all in your head, Harry, but why should that mean it isn't real?"_

* * *

They meet in group therapy. She's wearing Cookie Monster pajamas and a frown, and he can't stop scratching his head.

"You're getting on my nerves," she informs him fifteen minutes into the session.

"It's not me, it's them," he tells her.

"Well, tell them to stop."

"Why do you think I'm here?" he snaps.

The orderly, Javert, eyes them suspiciously and they settle down.

"I'm Éponine," she whispers after a few moments.

He bats at something around his head. "I'm Enjolras. And friends."

She laughs, loud and clear. Later that night, when the voices won't leave him alone, he will think of her laugh.

* * *

They begin gravitating towards each other at therapy. She rolls her eyes and never participates, even when the kind and understanding Dr. Digne asks her to, and he tries to shut up the voices in his head. She figures it out after a while and starts distracting him so he won't hear them. They pass notes, and when Javert puts an end to that, they learn to communicate through significant looks and fingers tapping on the hard plastic chairs.

And it works. He stops hearing the voices so much whenever she's around. He starts seeking her out more often—it isn't hard to find her because she's always alone. They watch TV together (only approved programming, of course) and she makes fun of everything except for the romance films, which she insists are "deep".

"Do you think it's worth it?" she asks out of the blue one day. "College."

"You didn't go?" he asks, perplexed. Everyone he knows went to college. It's just another reminder of the different places they come from, like how she always wears the same three ratty pajama bottoms and he always holds doors for women.

She shakes her head. "I was saving up for it, but I ended up here instead."

She never has told you why she's here, has she?

_That's none of your business, R._

_**Why not? She knows about us, why don't we know about her?**_

**She's probably more fucked up than we are.**

**Ha! Not likely.**

"Shut up," he growls, his fingers scratching at his scalp. "Shut up, shut up."

She scoots closer to him and weaves her hand through his. "You don't have to try to shut them out. Just don't listen to them. They're just white noise."

* * *

He devises a syllabus and informs Éponine she's enrolling in his "university". She tells him to fuck off.

But she does take a look at the syllabus, and it gets the better of her, and finally she demands to have a "class" with him. He teaches History, Sociology, Politics, and Literature, all from memory and all from the books he was allowed to bring. Jean Valjean joins the class and jokes that with his five other identities, Enjolras practically has a full class.

But whereas Jean is content to absorb, Éponine takes a much more active role. She challenges everything Enjolras says and tells him he's wrong, and finally he gives assigned reading. She returns later that night, throwing his beloved copy of Voltaire on the bed; to his dismay and delight, she's underlined all the passages that prove his argument invalid.

"If this were the real world, you'd get kicked out of class for being that ballsy," he informs her.

She grins. "Good thing nothing about this place is real, then."

* * *

Things go like this for a while. The voices get pushed to the side, and for the first time in a long time, he feels happy. He's making progress, the doctors tell him, and he might be able to go home soon.

He decides to share the good news with Éponine and he knocks at her door. He hears her voice within and pushes open the door. She's standing in the middle of her room, looking like a deer caught in headlights.

"What are you doing in here?" she spits. Her eyes narrow and it occurs to him that these are not Éponine's eyes at all.

"I'm…I knocked and I thought you said to come in," he stutters.

You fucked up, you fucked up.

**Careful, she's going to pounce**_._

She certainly looks like it, her body tensed and her shoulders curled as if waiting for an attack. "Now isn't a good time," she grounds out.

"I'm sorry—"

"_Get out_."

He scrambles for the door, careful to close it behind him.

* * *

When he sees her later, she's shuffling her feet and her eyes have that dead look that means she's been tranquilized.

"You okay?" he asks as she drops onto the bench beside him.

She shrugs, twisting her fork into her macaroni. "I had an episode. I don't remember a lot. They had to take me out. I just woke up."

He hesitates, considers bringing up the encounter in her room. But he doesn't. They eat in silence until she asks if he wants to watch the _Harry Potter_ marathon on ABC Family this weekend, and he says yes.

* * *

Spring melts away the snow and urges blossoms from the trees surrounding the hospital, and it's so nice out that Dr. Digne suggests an outing. They pair up, closely supervised by the orderlies, and wander around Saint-Michel.

"I wish I wasn't so fucked up," Enjolras declares, taking in the world like he's never seen it before. Maybe he hasn't, really. "I always wanted to go into politics. I always wanted to help people."

"Politicians are full of shit, even the ones who swore they wouldn't be," she says as if she knows anything about the matter. "You can help people no matter what you do, though." And then, "Do you think I'm crazy?"

He could use this moment to ask her what she's doing in the hospital in the first place, what makes her so fucked up that she's been locked away but not so much that he can't see it. But he doesn't. "You're not crazy."

She relaxes. "You're not, either," she says, even though he never asked if he was. She digs her hand into his and keeps it there.

* * *

He's released before April can creep into May. He will live with his mother, continue taking the meds and have weekly check-ups with Dr. Digne, but it's more freedom than he ever could have hoped for.

"I'll miss you," he says.

"Have fun in the real world," she says.

* * *

They try calling each other a few times, but it feels awkward because they were never conversational aficionados in the first place. Instead, they write letters, saying with pen and paper what they can't bring themselves to say over the phone. He tells her what the real world is like and how fucked-up it feels compared to the hospital. He misses the blinding white of the hallways, the fluorescent lights and the orderlies controlling everything. There's chaos in the real world with no one to babysit you, and such a riot of color and sound and triggers everywhere. She responds with knock-knock jokes and quotes, and somehow he's able to decode them.

_Knock-knock._

_Who's there?_

_French Revolution._

* * *

Two months into his new life, she breaks into his house. He goes to his bedroom after dinner to find her drenched from the rain and dripping all over his room.

"You have nice stuff," she declares.

"What…"

"I got your address from all the letters you sent. I got bored with the hospital after you left, so I broke out."

He should ask her why she really left, ask her what she plans to do without her meds and what he's supposed to do when she starts reacting. But he doesn't. He just finds dry clothes that mostly fit her and turns away while she shimmies into them. They lay out her wet clothes to dry and she takes the remote.

"_America's Next Top Model_ is on tonight and we're watching it. That's the other part of why I left; Javert wouldn't let me watch it anymore."

And just like that, everything is back to normal. He complains about the show and she makes fun of it and they both laugh at the dumb moments. When _America's Next Top Model_ is over, they flip between TLC and Bravo, the two stations with the best/worst reality shows, and Enjolras never wants it to end. He sneaks into the kitchen around midnight to get food and, after a pause, a bottle of wine from his father's wine cellar.

Éponine gobbles down the snacks and together, they swig down the bottle of wine. It loosens their tongues, and they soon find themselves lying side by side on his bed, sharing secrets.

"I'm pansexual," he admits.

"The fuck is that."

"It means I like everyone."

"I hate everyone, what does that make me?"

They lapse into a thoughtful silence.

"I had a boyfriend once."

She twists to look at him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He feels his eyes begin to burn. "He's dead."

She sits up.

"He died along with my seven best friends. We were leading a demonstration, and a bomb went off…I was the only one on the platform who didn't die."

She stares at him. "Jesus, Enjolras…"

He wipes furiously at his eyes. "The voices I hear? It's all of them. It was nice at first, you know, my boyfriend and my best friends would never leave me…but then it became a nightmare."

She drops her eyes. "At least your hallucinations are real people."

His eyes wander to her. "Yeah?"

She clears her throat. "Yeah. I see this guy, and he…they tell me he doesn't exist, but he seems so fucking _real_. He used to show up at the grocery store where I worked, and they fired me because they said I was scaring customers. And people kept asking me who I was talking to and he told me no one else could see him and I _believed_ it. And one day these two guys came out of nowhere and took me to the hospital. And I was so pissed that no one listened to me, and I hid my meds in my mattress and just tried to go along with it. I thought I'd just play their game and they'd let me go. Only they figured out I was lying after you left and they started monitoring me and I don't see Marius anymore and…I hate this feeling, Enjolras." Her voice cracks. "I felt sane before, you know? But the meds just take it all out of me…I don't have anything left inside."

He sits up and takes her hand in his. "You don't have to do this on your own. I can help you—"

She cuts him off by mashing her mouth against his. He pulls away. "Éponine," he mutters, blushing furiously as he stares at his knees.

She touches his chin and tilts his face up to hers. "You said you can help. Help me by making me feel something. I want to feel this," she traces his lips, "and this," she drops her fingers down to his chest, "and whatever else you can give me."

He should tell her no, she literally just broke out of the mental hospital and she hasn't taken her nightly pills and she's had half a bottle of wine and she will regret this later.

But he doesn't.

Instead, he buries his fingers in her hair and kisses her.

* * *

They take her away the next morning. She goes peacefully, joking with the two burly men. As the van pulls away, she blows Enjolras a kiss.

And then he doesn't hear from her anymore. He writes letters again, but they go unanswered. He even tries to call, just to hear her voice, just to see how she's doing, but Simplice tells him that Éponine is having a difficult time.

The sweltering heat of summer begins to die down when he gets the phone call.

* * *

The orderlies never had been able to find all the pills she'd squirrelled away.

* * *

On the wall, written in shaky marker, is the word **MARIUS**. It is surrounded by quotes, by equations and question marks and lots and lots of confusion. Enjolras has seen similar scribbles in other patient's rooms, and he wonders now how he never noticed this. Her Marius algorithms continue into notebooks, filling pages and pages and they all carry an air of deep frustration.

And then, in one corner of her room, she has simply written _Enjolras_. No quotes. No equations. No punctuation marks. Nothing. Just the name.

But he understands. He's always understood, in a sense.

* * *

**I told you she was fucked up**.

_Quiet._

**Don't get so upset, Ferre, she **_**was**_** fucked up. You saw that room.**

_**I don't think Enjolras wants to hear any of this.**_

I don't think Enjolras wants any of us in his head in the first place, but that hasn't been stopping us, has it?

_He thought he wanted us here at first, remember? He thought he wouldn't miss us if he had us with him all the time. Then we became a mental illness. Schizophrenia. That doesn't go away, you know. You get treated for it, you get better, but it doesn't ever go away._

_**You're not even a real doctor.**_

HE'S MORE OF A DOCTOR THAN YOU ARE, FEUILLY.

As romantic as it is watching you defend your boyfriend, Bossuet, it's a little heartbreaking; mine thinks I'm a mental illness he can get rid of with pills and now he's in love with a crazy dead girl.

_She wasn't crazy, R, and Enjolras still loves you. He loves all of us. That's why we'll never leave him._

* * *

The addition of a ninth voice is unsurprising, but he's still not sure whether or not he wants it. The ninth voice gets along well with the other eight, and he'd be lying if he said it wasn't nice to have her around once in a while, even though he knows it's extremely unhealthy.

In a way, it's almost better. Where the others always bickered and talked over one another, Éponine manages to come out loud and clear and shut them up when she has to. He knows what Dr. Digne would say, that it's not _really_ Éponine and that it's just his _hallucination_ and _projection_ of Éponine controlling the other voices, but he still likes the idea.

He gets more accomplished, too. He works for a nonprofit organization and writes angry letters to the state pushing for every form of social reform imaginable, but especially mental health. He writes for periodicals and is asked to give speeches about his experiences.

The voices never go away, and he doesn't try to make them anymore. They're as much a part of him as his hands and feet. Sometimes he still mutters to himself and bats at his head when they argue.

But it works.


	8. better than red velvet

A/N: The prompt this time was Enjolras and Eponine bickering over which dessert to split. Fluff and more fluff. Thanks for everyone who's left a review!

* * *

Éponine and Enjolras did not often have date nights. They were both extremely busy people, what with Enjolras being in grad school, Éponine working two jobs, the Amis's protests, and raising Gavroche. So on the rare occasion they got to take a Friday night off and go out, just the two of them, they made the most of it.

The night had gone reasonably well; they'd gone to see an artsy movie and made out like teenagers when it became boring, and then they'd gone to dinner at a chic restaurant in midtown. They'd had good food and even better conversation.

And then the waiter came.

"Would you like to see our dessert menu?" he asked, clearing the table.

"Yes, please," Éponine said at once.

Enjolras raised an eyebrow as the waiter left. "I thought you were full."

She shrugged. "I am, but I want something sweet."

The waiter returned moments later with two small pieces of laminated paper covered in flowery script. "I'll be back when you're ready," he said, smiling and vanishing into the void.

"Want to share something?" Enjolras asked, scanning the items.

"That sounds perfect, actually." She looked for a moment longer. "Ooh, let's get the double chocolate cake."

He made a face. "Absolutely not."

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, then what do _you_ want?"

"Red velvet cake," he said smoothly.

She gagged. "_Red velvet cake?!_"

"What's wrong with red velvet cake?" he demanded imperiously.

"Only everything."

"Oh, come on…"

"Please, who actually even likes red velvet? That's right, no one."

"_Lots_ of people like red velvet!" he informed her. "But why anyone would want _double chocolate_ is beyond me. Just chocolate smothered in more chocolate…"

"More people like chocolate than red velvet," she snapped. It occurred to both of them how ridiculous they sounded and they leaned back.

"Maybe we should find a different dessert," Enjolras suggested, running his fingers through his hair.

"Yeah, you're right," she muttered, looking at the dessert menu again. "Okay…what about the coconut cake?"

"I hate coconut," he declared, his voice dripping with disdain.

"Of course you do," Éponine muttered.

"And what is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Only that you hate all the good things in this world."

"Éponine, can we just pick a dessert?"

"I don't know, can we?"

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. When he released his breath a few moments later and opened his eyes, he was only fractionally calmer. "Maybe we should just skip dessert."

"No, I want dessert," she declared stubbornly. "Here, they've got a brownie with ice cream, and a sundae…that is, if you can get over your ungodly hatred of chocolate."

"Éponine."

"There's cheesecake—I'm sorry, it's chocolate, I hope that's not a problem."

"_Éponine._"

"Have we made our decision?" the waiter asked, reappearing.

"_We_ would like our check," Enjolras ground out.

"No dessert?" the waiter asked, collecting the menus.

"_No_."

Since Éponine had paid for the movie tickets, Enjolras paid for dinner, moodily signing his name and throwing down the pen when he was done. She sulkily followed him from the restaurant and out to the car.

"Can we at least stop at Dairy Queen?" she asked as he unlocked the car.

"No."

She huffed, putting her hands on her hips.

"Get in the car, Ep."

Struck by an idea, she slid into the passenger seat and closed the door carefully behind her. "You mean I can't have _any_ dessert?" she pouted.

"No." He wasn't even looking at her, which made reaching over to unbuckle his belt that much easier. "Éponine!" he yelped.

"I want dessert," she declared.

"Not in publ-li-li-ic," he gasped as she unzipped his hands and lowered her head.

"Like they've never seen someone getting blown in a parking lot before," she laughed.

He grunted and threaded his fingers in her hair, trying to pull her back. "Just—shit—wait 'til we get home, okay?"

She smirked. "I can't make any promises."

How they managed to drive all the way home and make it up the stairs to their apartment without ripping each other's clothes off, they never knew. Enjolras was ready to ravage her the moment the door slammed shut and locked, but much to his surprise, she stopped him.

"Wait!"

She ran to the fridge and, with a devious smirk, pulled out the whipped cream. "I said I wanted dessert."

He has to admit, it's better than red velvet cake.


	9. ain't we got fun

A/N: Another prompt! This time it was to make Eponine a bootlegger. Enjoy!

* * *

They call themselves the Friends of the ABC, but the papers call them the ABC gang. They are a Robin Hood gang of sorts, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. They travel from city to city, keeping close to the Canadian border in case they need to foot it out of the country, but they almost always wind up back in Chicago; it's the largest city in the Midwest and it serves their purposes well. They go on robbing sprees, taking from this bank and that millionaire, and drive around the South Side, giving to anyone and everyone who needs it. Then they lose themselves in the city's seedy underbelly in the ensuing weeks, waiting for the chaos to die down before they strike again. They stay with a widow who they call Mother Hucheloup and spend their nights in speakeasies with girls and booze.

Enjolras rarely drinks and it's rarer still for him to talk to a girl, preferring to sit in a corner and watch his friends—which is why it's so strange when she approaches his dimly-lit corner the night after their big heist on the north shore.

"Why the long face?" she asks, her voice lilting with a foreign accent—French, he thinks.

"I don't much care for booze," he says.

She smirks, the light catching the beads on her dress as she shifts her weight to one hip. "Then you are in the wrong place, m'sieur."

"I'm hiding out from the police," he says, because he's bored and she probably won't remember him anyway.

"So am I! What did you do? I'm a bootlegger." She takes one of the several unoccupied chairs at his table, resting her chin in her hands as if fascinated by whatever he's about to say.

A small smile creeps onto his face. "I robbed some very rich men."

"So you're loaded." She bites into her consonants and halts around her vowels and overall it's very charming.

He shakes his head. "We give most of what we take to those who don't have anything; we only keep enough to support ourselves."

Her lips curl into a smirk. "You're that gang I read all about in the papers, aren't you? The ABC gang. You're a lot younger than they make you out to be. And cuter, too."

To distract her from his blush, he asks, "Do you make it a habit of yours to flirt with gang members?"

She leans in closer and he catches a faint, flowery scent. "Why? Is it working?" His blush deepens and she laughs. "Let me get you a drink, Mister ABC."

He arches an eyebrow. "I don't know how they do things in France, but in America, it's the men who get the drinks."

"I'm not from France," she says, leaning back with a disgruntled expression. "I'm from a little island off the coast of Canada called Saint-Pierre. And I know how things are done in America, but my father's gang are the ones who provided the liquor, so I will be the one getting the drinks for free, I think." And before he can protest, she is up and sauntering across the room.

She has hardly left when Combeferre and Courfeyrac, a pretty girl swinging at his side, swarm him.

"You know who that is, don't you?" Combeferre demands. Without waiting for an answer, he says, "That's Éponine Thénardier."

His eyebrows raise. "As in the bootlegger Thénardier?" he asks, watching her charm the bartender. She wasn't kidding. Thénardier is a familiar name in Al Capone's speakeasies—for Thénardier is the main supplier of the liquor. He and his gang, the Patron-Minette, smuggle over the Canadian border and manage to get an impressive amount of liquor past the Chicago police. They're a harmless gang, made up of a few men looking to get rich fast, but they are still a gang, and one connected with Al Capone. The Friends of the ABC have made a point to avoid recognition, and now the daughter of a man who supplies liquor to Al Capone knows who he is.

Courfeyrac laughs. "All the guys in this room and she picks the one who doesn't drink. Grantaire'll be so disappointed when he finds out."

"She's probably up to something," Combeferre warns.

"What? You think Al Capone sent a girl to seduce and kill the leader of a gang of twenty-year-olds?" Courfeyrac snorts. "Come on, honey, I'm still sober."

The girl cackles, loudly, and they disappear.

Combeferre shrugs. "All the same, she's been known to help her father carry out jobs before, and it _does_ strain credulity that she just _happened_ to walk into _this_ speakeasy and start talking to the man who runs a gang who just pulled off a big heist—especially when he's sitting in a corner and not drinking."

Enjolras feels a twinge of annoyance. Of course the minute an attractive girl starts talking to him, she has to be up to something. But Combeferre _does_ have a point—it _is _more than a coincidence. He gives a curt nod, dismissing his lieutenant; Combeferre has hardly been gone when she returns, two glasses of whiskey in hand.

"Was that your lieutenant warning you to stay away from me?" she asks with a knowing smile.

He already feels stupid for even doubting her. "He looks out for me," he says instead.

She nods sagaciously as she settles in her seat. "It's good for someone else to have your back." She knocks back a good portion of the whiskey and lets out an appreciative "aah", wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "That's good stuff," she sighs, and he can't help noting how post-orgasmic the comment sounds.

He sips at his own whiskey, restraining a grunt at the liquid burning its way down his throat. "So what brings you from Saint-Pierre to Chicago?"

She produces a cigarette from a clutch he didn't see before and lights it. "I help my father. He took me once a couple years ago, just to show me around, and I begged him not to take me home. So he gets me to help him smuggle things into the city and in return I get to live here." She takes a drag from her cigarette. "And what about you? Why did you decide to live your life of crime?"

He knows she's teasing, but he can't joke about this subject. "My father was a lawyer. I came from a good home, always taught right from wrong. When I was ten, my father brought me to court so I could see what he did for a living. The man on trial had stolen a loaf of bread to feed his sister's son. He was fined, and because he didn't have the money to pay the fine they put him in prison. And that's when I realized something was wrong with the way our world works, and I decided to do something about it. At school I found these fellas, and it just sort of happened."

She exhales a sultry, smoky breath. "You are all really fucked up."

He smiles because she doesn't even know the half of it. "How about a dance?"

She stubs out her cigarette. "I thought you'd never ask."

* * *

They whirl through several dances and several rounds of drinks and he falls a little bit in love with her. When they stop to catch their breath, she charms the ABCs, plying them with drinks and pretty friends and stories about the mob bosses she's met. It's growing late when she looks up at him from beneath sooty eyelashes and purrs in his ear that she'd like to go somewhere quieter.

And without hesitating, he tells Combeferre to get a taxi.

She cozies up to him in the backseat, her body pressed to his and her fingers fiddling with his coat as she chatters away. He's glad for the conversation, in all honesty, because he hasn't necked with a girl in a while and he's not keen for his next attempt to be in a taxi.

They're heading towards Mother Hucheloup's house by way of Montrose Avenue when she stops the driver. "Let's watch the sunrise from the beach," she says without warning. "I used to do it all the time at home."

He doesn't know why, because it sounds like a horrible idea, but he pays the taxi driver and follows her onto the beach. She's already sitting in the sand, staring out at Lake Michigan. He eases onto the sand beside her, wincing as he feels the cool and damp make contact with his suit. "The sunrise won't be for a few more hours."

"We can pass the time, and if you get tired of me, you can get another taxi," she reminds him matter-of-factly.

He can't exactly argue with this logic.

They pass the hours swapping stories of childhood, of what they do now, of where they want to go.

"I want to go to Paris," she says, her eyes full of the stars over their heads. "I have ancestors from there, or some shit."

It both surprises him and makes him want to laugh when she swears, the fierce way she commits to throwing around the words.

"But I want to go for me. I can't remember the last time I did anything for me." She fumbles in her clutch for her pack of cigarettes and lighter. "What about you, pretty-boy?"

He shrugs. "I never had a destination in mind. The boys want to retire on some island with sun and girls, but I never planned on making it that far."

She cups her hand around the flame, the orange glow throwing her features into sharp relief. "You just want to keep going until something stops you."

"Yes."

She exhales a satisfying stream of smoke and returns the lighter to her clutch. "You're smarter than everybody else in this business. All these gangsters, they set aside these big homes in…I don't know, Tahiti and Barbados, wherever people go when they retire. And they make these big plans and then they get shot up."

He considers. "Maybe they know they're going to get shot up; maybe they just want to have something they can pretend to look forward to. Something that makes it all worth it."

She presses a kiss to his cheek. "You're a really depressing guy, you know?"

* * *

An hour later finds him them lying on the ground, her head resting on his chest and his arm draped around her waist.

"Don't fall asleep," he murmurs unconvincingly. His eyes are closed and he doesn't think he'll be able to open them again.

"I'm not." She turns her head so that she's facing him. "And to think, I was going to seduce you."

The corner of his mouth raises in a tired attempt at a smile. "I knew it." Then, "What do you mean _was_?"

"I can't anymore; you have a little baby face when you sleep." As if to prove her point, she pinches his cheek.

"Ow." He swats at her hand and, when he catches it, kisses it tenderly.

She sighs into his coat. "Enjolras?"

"Mm."

"Your lieutenant was right about me."

"What's that?" He cracks an eye open.

"I was supposed to take you out tonight."

His other eye opens. "Excuse me?"

She sighs, sitting up. "I had a run-in with the cops and I owed them a favor…so their chief asked me to take you out. A lot of men in this city pay him off to look the other way, but you guys have been stealing all their money and it's making him antsy."

He sits up as well, feeling dizzy. "And you brought me out here to…"

"Yes, but I don't want to kill you." She reaches up into the slit of her dress and retrieves a gun. "You're such a nice guy and you're doing a good thing. And I hate the cops." And she throws the gun towards the shore.

He furrows his brow. "Just like that? You're just going to walk away?"

She shrugs, but she won't quite meet his gaze. "I like you, and I know you like me or you wouldn't have come here without a bodyguard."

"Won't you get in trouble?"

She shrugs again. "Probably, but if the cops were any good at catching up to bootleggers, we'd all be in trouble." She starts to stand up but he grabs her wrist and pulls her back down. He miscalculates, however, and they end up toppling to the ground. "What are you—"

He kisses her. Her lips are warm and bitterly sweet and he could stay like this forever if the world let him.

"What was that for?" she murmurs as they pull apart.

"Stay with me." He says it with such confidence that it's as if she's already agreed to.

She snorts. "Why?"

"You'll be in trouble with the cops after this, you'll need protection. Your father will have to rely on Capone, and he probably won't be willing to provide protection for a girl who fraternized with the enemy."

She reaches up to fiddle with his tie. "Who says I need protecting?"

"The Chicago Police Department," he says wryly. "The fellas like you, and I think you like them. And we could use someone like you."

"I think you're looking for excuses to keep me around so you can get me in bed."

"We'll go to Paris," he continues as if he can't hear her.

Her mouth twists into a bitter smile. "I thought you were going to go until you got shot up."

He shrugs. "It'll be the plan we always have and never get to."

She looks up at him, and he will never forget this moment. "You have a lot to learn, pretty-boy." She pulls him down to her, sighing against him. "But I'll teach you what I can."

* * *

Her eyes flutter just as the sun begins to rise.

"Was it worth it?" he mumbles into her hair, and she smiles, settling further into his arms.

"Yes."

* * *

They get out of Chicago, though not before making off with a good portion of Al Capone's liquor, and blaze their way to San Francisco. They make the national papers, this curious group of boys and the young woman who walks among them.

In San Francisco, they escape a trap laid out for them by the skin of their teeth.

"You can leave whenever you want to," Enjolras tells her. "I'll send you to Paris, or back to Saint-Pierre, wherever you want to go. You don't have to throw yourself on my funeral pyre."

She blows smoke in his face and laughs. "You're not getting rid of me that easy."

* * *

In the end, it's the police that get them.

The National Guard waits for them in St. Louis, locking them in the city's slums. They get her first, gunning her down when her heels catches on a crack in the pavement and she falls behind.

They pick off the others one by one after that, the boys falling in a spray of bullets, until it's just Enjolras and Grantaire left crouching in an alley. They give each other one nod before they go out, guns blazing. Enjolras is the last to fall, his hands red, his shirt stained red, the streets running red with blood…

They never did make it to Paris.


	10. falling

A/N: Hello lovelies! This chapter comes from another prompt: "Out of 10,000 feet of fall, always remember that the last half inch hurts the most." -Charles W. Purcell. This is flashback heavy, hence the italics, and set in the _Star Trek_ universe. I researched everything and I think I have it all right; I only ever watched the original series and the 2009 and 2013 movies, so apologies in advance if anything is inaccurate.

Enjoy!

* * *

The ship rocks and a whole world sails by in front of them and Enjolras is powerless to stop it.

_This is how we die_.

It started out as a simple navigational error. They'd warped into Klingon territory and, just as they were trying to make the jump back into hyperspace, a Klingon patrol had fired on them. No warning, nothing. Even after putting up their shields and trying to reason with the Klingons, the warbirds continued to fire on them until the U.S.S. _Patria_ was little more than a ragged piece of metal held together by its wires.

He'd ordered the crew to evacuate, to take the emergency escape pods and jettison back to Earth, but those on deck and a few in the engine room and in the medical bay refused to leave his side.

"With all due respect, captain," his first officer, Combeferre, had said, "we're not going anywhere."

They'd put up a fight, those that remained, but they lost. And now they are falling.

He looks around him and sees tears on Marius and Cosette's cheeks. Bahorel's knuckles turned white from gripping his seatbelt. Joly and Bossuet burying their heads in Musichetta's neck. Courfeyrac, as always, staring straight ahead and waiting for whatever's coming next.

He turns around because he wants to look at her one last time, because even if they fought all the time and they hadn't been acknowledging each other outside of captain-officer duties the last few weeks, he still loves her. That's been the trouble all along.

_They meet in the academy. He's the confident boy who will become a captain and she's the shadow of a girl who's studying xenolinguistics and communications because she wants to get away from this planet. He only knows her as Marius's friend for the longest time, until they get into a fight._

"_Making peace with the Klingons is impossible!" she snarls, her face red. Some hair comes loose from her bun and falls into her face. "They're vicious!"_

"_Only because we've been trained to see them that way," he argues._

"_Because it's true! I've studied the Klingon language—"_

"_Oh, and I suppose that makes you an expert on their culture and lifestyle?"_

"_I've studied the Klingon language," she repeats, raising her voice, "and it's very harsh. It's a reflection of their culture. We say things like 'thank you' and 'I care about you' and their language doesn't allow for those kinds of constructions because they don't feel gratitude and they don't care about other people and we can try to make peace but they are not going to take it from us!"_

"_We can't very well stay at a cold war with them!" he snaps._

"_It's better than having them invade us!" _

_He stares at her and it only really occurs to him then. "Why are you getting so upset about this? You're so quiet normally."_

_She scoffs. "I get upset about a lot of the things you say, but you never give anyone the chance to talk. You didn't notice I had an opinion until I was shouting it in your face."_

_They form an unsteady friendship after that, consisting mostly of shouting at each other and refusing to agree on anything. Ever._

She looks so small wrapped up in the automatic seatbelt. Her eyes catch his and she unbuckles her seatbelt.

"Éponine!"

She flings herself from her chair to his, and he lurches forward to grab her before she rolls away.

"You should be buckled in," he chastises even as he lifts her onto his lap, securing his arms around her waist.

"Or what, I'll die?" she says sarcastically.

_They're arguing about the Kobayashi Maru when something changes._

"_Are you __seriously__ taking it again?" she groans. "Enjolras, you can't beat it; that's kind of the point!"_

"_I just don't see why they would program a test to be unwinnable," he huffs._

"_It's based on no-win scenarios," she reminds him. "It's designed to test your abilities as a captain during a crisis."_

_He shakes his head, jaw clenched. "It's bullshit. They're desensitizing us."_

_She rolls her eyes. "You're not going to be able to save everyone, Enjolras." She glances at him and sighs, her tone softening. "Don't beat yourself up over it. You're putting your all into it and that's what counts." When he still doesn't look reassured, she links her hand with his._

_The arguing becomes less frequent and more of these comfortable silences take their place. _

"I'm just worried about you," he mutters as she ropes her arms around his neck.

The corner of her mouth twists into a bitter smile. "I hate to break it to you, but we're past the point of worrying."

He releases a shaky breath. "I guess you're right."

_He's assigned as first officer on the U.S.S. Patria under Commander Lamarque—a five year exploration of space and all it has to offer. Many of his friends from the academy join him; Combeferre as chief sciences officer, Courfeyrac as helmsman, Gavroche the boy genius as navigator. Joly, Bossuet and Musichetta are all assigned to the medical bay while Bahorel and Feuilly wreak a special kind of havoc as engineers. Éponine, who wants off this planet more than any of them, is given the post of communications officer._

_They're both so excited that they actually hug each other when they get the news._

"_I thought I'd be stuck at the academy for years," she laughs in relief._

"_Yeah, well, don't get too comfortable; I have seniority over you I fully plan to abuse," he jokes._

_She raises her eyebrows. "You're gonna regret that when we're faced with a Klingon fleet and I'm the only one who can negotiate the terms."_

"not yap wa' Hol._"_

"_Asshole."_

She peers into his eyes. _Like stardust_ she'd said in one of her more sentimental moments. "Are you scared?"

The ship rolls and their grip on each other tightens, anchoring themselves to each other.

"I don't know," he admits. "That's what's scaring me. I don't know if I'm afraid to die."

"I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid that there was an accident and we'll live instead."

It strikes him that that's what's really been scaring him all along.

_They beam down to one of the outlying Orion planets on a smuggling tip-off. The chief welcomes them with open arms and arranges an elaborate dinner; "Anything for our Terran guests," he says in a silky voice Enjolras doesn't trust. _

_And then they bring out the slave girls. Orion slave girls are known for their hypnotic dances, for their ability to charm human men with the swirl of their hips. Enjolras goes from being mildly impressed to full-out convinced that the exotic creatures before him are __**goddesses**__. He will lay his life on the line for them, follow their every command, do whatever it takes to please them—_

_He comes out of the trance when Éponine, Cosette, and Musichetta have their phasers trained on the slave girls, their expressions murderous._

"_Look, I don't know what kind of illegal operation you're running here, but you are_ **not** _going to brainwash my crew," Éponine growls. She adds something in what sounds like threatening Orion. _

_The slave girl responds in kind and they continue like this until Éponine lowers her phaser. "Come on, boys," she says, still sounding furious. "We're leaving."_

_It isn't until they've beamed back up to the ship that she explains herself. _

"_The Orion slave girl is a façade. The men are the slaves; the women sell themselves and then brainwash their owners. It's very clever. They were trying to brainwash you, too, so you wouldn't go poking around their planet." And with that, she stalks off._

_But she stays angry for days, and Enjolras finally catches her in one of the corridors and confronts her about it._

"_I just don't understand what you're so angry about. You're acting like it's our fault."_

"_You were staring at those Orion girls even before they started altering your physiology," she spits, folding her arms over her chest._

_It dawns on him. "You're jealous."_

_She turns red. "No, I'm just—"_

"_You're jealous, and that's why you got so mad!" he crows in victory._

_She slams him against the wall and smashes her mouth against his. Her hands are fisted in his shirt, her hips rolling against his, and he wonders why he never wanted this before. Maybe he did. Maybe he's always wanted this and he's never realized it._

"_You're such an __**idiot**__," she breathes when she pulls away. And she takes off down the hallway._

"I'm sorry," he blurts. "I'm sorry I let us go."

She reaches up to run her fingers through his hair. "I wasn't exactly holding on, either," she reminds him gently.

"You were right. Before. About—"

She silences him with a finger on his lips. "It doesn't matter anymore."

He takes the hand against his lips and kisses it.

_They run into a Romulan dreadnought a year and a half into their exploration and not even Éponine's smooth-talking in Rihannsu gets them out of it. Their commander asks to speak with Lamarque—in private. _

_The captain doesn't seem worried, only jokingly tells Enjolras not to get too used to the captain's chair._

_And then, not half an hour after taking a shuttle to the ship, his signal cuts out. The Romulan commander hails them and tells them they have five seconds to get out of Romulan territory or they'll end up like their captain._

_Enjolras doesn't waste any time, just orders Courfeyrac to put up the shields and fire on the dreadnought. They escape, but only just. _

_He stumbles to his cabin, his stomach turning. He loved Lamarque like a father, loved him even more than his own father, perhaps, and now that man is gone. Everyone is already calling him captain, already forgetting that Lamarque ever existed._

_She finds him minutes later, his head in his hands and his shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. She crawls onto his bed and guides his head to her chest, her fingers running through his hair as she murmurs to him. _

_He doesn't know what she's saying because all he can hear is his heartbeat and hers pounding in his ears, but it doesn't matter because he knows what she means. She stays with him that night, and the night after, and every night after that. Becoming a captain isn't easy, but somehow, she makes it a little easier._

She presses her lips to his once, twice, a third time. Light flashes through the bridge—they are in the planet's atmosphere now.

"Don't look," she says, holding his face to hers. "Don't even think. Just look at me."

_He's one of the best captains Starfleet has ever seen. They commend him for his diplomacy, for his generosity to those who need it and his firmness to those who require it. _

_She's behind him every step of the way, supporting him in whatever way he needs. It's comforting to know that she's there in a moment of crisis, to hear her voice over his shoulder. It's more comforting still to fall into her arms every night._

_She never asks for anything in return, only him. He knows that things will change when they get back home, that they will no longer be in a confined space and rules will have to be established. But for now, he holds onto every bit of her that he can._

_Until one day, she starts slipping away._

_They're not sure how it happens, but then, it doesn't really matter. The silences start filling with arguments, and for the first time in months, she starts sleeping in her cabin again._

_And then one day it all stops. She marches out of his cabin after a particularly brutal fight and that's the end of it. No more stolen glances on the bridge, no more nights spent in each other's arms. Even the arguments stop. They simply stop acknowledging that the other has ever meant something to them._

They can feel the hull hit the ground. Her eyes squeeze shut, waiting.

"I love you," he shouts over the roaring, and his eyes snap shut of their own accord. "I lov—"

_His favorite memory of her will always be at the academy. They'd finished with exams for the semester and she dragged him to some bar with lots of loud, modern music._

"_This isn't really my scene," he tries to explain even as she shoves a beer in his hand._

"_Come on, you're going to be a captain someday! Isn't it your duty to 'boldly go where no man has gone before'?" she teases, laughing at the misappropriation of the oath._

"_I don't know about where 'no man has gone before'; it feels like half the galaxy's in here," he notes dryly._

_Grantaire loops an arm around her waist before she can respond and swings her out to the neon dancefloor. Enjolras watches as they stumble and spin; she throws back her head and laughs._

_It was the happiest he would ever see her. Back before they were given real responsibilities and before his problems became her problems. Before he crawled into her embrace every night and she tried to hold them both up._

_Maybe that was why he never chased after her when she left. _

It's over in a blinding flash of yellow and orange and white.


	11. scéller par un baiser

A/N: This is another prompt; this time it was for for Enjolras to be an FBI agent and Eponine a world-renowned thief who helps him catch criminals instead of going to jail. **joly-poly** on tumblr made a BEAUTIFUL set of graphics for this, so I'd suggest checking it out over there!

Enjoy!

* * *

Enjolras closes his car door, flashing his badge to get through the yellow caution tape. "What have we got?" he calls to Courfeyrac, the younger man already jogging dutifully down the steps.

"It's another Matisse," he says as he reaches his superior. They head inside. "Alarms went off around three-thirty this morning; police found the security guards knocked out and tied up in a janitor's closet."

"Any leads?"

"About that…"

Combeferre is standing in front of the roped-off area, his face grim but his eyes dancing in amusement. "You might wanna take a look at this, boss."

Enjolras feels like he knows what might be coming; nevertheless, he ducks under the rope. There is a large, empty square where a painting once hung, and in the corner, a red lipstick mark.

_Éponine._

The Patron-Minette first appeared on their radar some ten-fifteen years ago when they expanded their operations from France to Spain, the U.K., and eventually the U.S. Headed by a man identified only as Thénardier, the Patron-Minette made off with a fair amount of money from a number of charitable organizations. Enjolras hadn't been that concerned—until Thénardier's daughter began stealing valuable pieces of art and selling them on the black market.

He first encountered the French cat-thief two years ago at an art gala. She left him unconscious, tied to a marble statue of Apollo and with a very red lipstick mark on his cheek. Since then she had continued stealing from museums worldwide (but mainly in Enjolras's area) and always left her signature lipstick mark.

He was almost positive it was to tease him.

"Run tests," he sighs. "And," he hesitates. "See if there are any leads on her."

"Sure thing, boss."

* * *

The tests, as usual, give the usual culprit, who is, as usual, nowhere to be found.

"She was last spotted in Argentina three months ago, but that's all we know," Courfeyrac says.

Combeferre, however, feels more positive.

"She's been targeting very specific works the last few months; she's probably working for an employer. The last three have been Matisse, and the next one will probably be a Matisse as well."

Enjolras considers. "Courfeyrac," he barks. "Find out which of Matisse's works are the highest-valued, and find out where they are. Maybe we can stay one step ahead of her."

"What if she suspects something?" Combeferre asks as the other man scampers off.

Enjolras considers. "I'll take care of it."

* * *

The National Gallery of Art, funnily enough, is featuring a Matisse exhibition. The security guards, edgier than usual, keep circling back to the exhibition, checking the security system and nodding resolutely when it all checks out.

Around two in the morning, they go to investigate a noise.

It's a woman, dressed all in black and with blood-red lipstick. Where they try to restrain her with brute force, she wriggles away with lithe ease. She knocks out the first guard and smashes together the heads of the second and third, effectively knocking them unconscious; the fourth just manages to pull the alarm before she takes care of him and the alarm. Her fingers are nimble, tapping buttons and pulling wires until she's rigged the system into thinking it's in alarm mode when it's not.

After stashing the bodies and locating the exhibit, she stops in front of _Lilacs_ and waves a careful hand in front of the painting. Nothing happens. Satisfied, she steps over the rope and works to remove the painting from its hooks. She's about to turn around and make off with her prize when she hears the click of a gun.

"Hold it right there."

Her red lips curl in a smirk. "Special Agent Gabriel Enjolras." She pronounces her words haltingly and carefully, her French accent noticeable at once. She turns around. "Long time, no see, _mon ami_."

He allows a small smile, but he keeps the gun pointed at her. "It's not like I haven't been trying."

"Oh, good; I'm glad to hear I'm keeping you on your toes." She shifts the painting to one hand and pulls out a pistol, aiming it at him as carelessly as if she was lighting a cigarette. "Now, this little chat has been very fun, Agent Enjolras, but I really must be going. _Au revoir_." She starts out.

"And what do you think your employer will say when you give him a fake?"

She stops in her tracks, wide eyes scanning the painting.

He can't help smirking. "Our boys do a good job, don't they, Miss Thénardier?"

Without warning, she chucks the painting at him, knocking the gun out of his hand. She makes a run for it, black boots hitting the marble tiles.

Enjolras dives wildly after her, catching her around the ankle and sending them both toppling. She rears back to pry him off and he grabs at her wrists, wrestling her own gun out of her hand and throwing it to the far side of the room. She uses his momentary distraction to flip them over so that she's crouching on his back with his hands pinned behind him. She's reaching into his backpocket for a pair of handcuffs when he swings with all his might, trapping her underneath him. But she refuses to stay this way for long; she pushes, and he pushes, and soon they are rolling all over the floor, fighting for control. She finally lands on top, pinning his arms down with her legs.

"Now—why does this look familiar?" she teases breathlessly.

He isn't having any of it. His legs, with some effort, come around her waist and across her stomach. He knees her in the chest, momentarily taking her breath away, and catches her face between his feet. She spits in venomous French as he pushes forward, sending her on her back.

"You were saying?"

She glares. "All right, Agent, you've made your point."

He untangles himself from her and stands up. "Come on," he says, reaching for the handcuffs in his backpocket.

But she swings a leg out underneath both of his and sends him on the ground again. Before he can react she is already pouncing on him, trapping his wrists with one hand and dangling his handcuffs over his head with the other.

"Looking for these?" she purrs with satisfaction.

"Hey!"

"Ah-ah-ah." She sets them to the side. "Before you arrest me and take me into federal custody, Agent Enjolras, I have a proposition for you." She leans back to straddle his waist. He suddenly wishes her catsuit wasn't so tight. "I'm sure that you and your federal bureau of investigation are looking for many other wanted criminals, _non_?"

"Yes," he says through gritted teeth.

"Including members of the Patron-Minette?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Are you saying you'll sell out your father's gang?"

She shrugs. "If you'll let me walk free, I will sell out my own country."

"Charming." He sits up on his elbows. "Pardon the cliché, but why should I trust you? I could let you walk out that door right now and I'd never see you again."

"Oh, but we both know that isn't true, Agent Enjolras; you're much too smart to not catch me again," she teases. "_Non,_ I need to ensure my safety, and you need to catch some of the world's most dangerous criminals. It's a fair trade."

He considers his options. On the one hand, he has a wanted thief _literally sitting in his lap_; on the other, she is offering him the chance to catch many more criminals, if he allows her to walk away and continue stealing. That is, if she even keeps her word. Still…

"Okay," he caves.

She beams. "Good. Now, if you'll pardon me, I have to make this look convincing."

And she bashes his head against the floor.

"_Bonne sommeil,"_ she whispers, kissing his cheek. Her lipstick leaves a perfect red mark.

* * *

The guys at the bureau can't stop laughing over his misfortune—poor Enjolras, got his ass handed to him by a little girl. _Twice_.

He's starting to regret letting her go; it's been three weeks since their encounter and he hasn't heard from her. It might not be so bad if the guys wouldn't stop giving him grief about it.

"I mean, she's gotta be, what, ninety pounds?" Grantaire sniggers, flipping through the candid photos the bureau has managed to sneak of her. "And she not only escaped, she knocked you the fuck out _twice_."

"I'm going to lunch," Enjolras says irritably, grabbing his jacket and storming to the elevator.

He's sitting at his usual booth at the Café Musain, intent on his iPhone, when he senses someone slipping into the opposite booth.

"Taking lunch by yourself, Agent?"

His mouth falls open. Éponine Thénardier is sitting across from him, smirking beneath a hat and a large pair of sunglasses.

"_What are you doing here?"_ he hisses, glancing around as surreptitiously as he knows how. "This café is a block away from the office, it's swarming with federal agents!"

"Exactly why no one will be looking for me here," she says smoothly. She gives her order to the waitress and pulls off her hat, pushing her sunglasses up to the top of her head. "Bet you thought you'd never hear from me again, didn't you?"

He can't stop staring at her because he can't believe she has the _audacity_ to show up at a café inhabited by _federal agents looking all over the world for her_. "Pretty much."

She leans forward. "Don't worry, I've been a good girl." With a wink, she accepts her coffee and waits for the waitress to leave before she continues. "I can get you Gueulemer tonight. I told him I need help with a project and he agreed. He's very stupid, so he doesn't suspect anything, but he could snap you in half."

He nods slowly, still unable to believe she's _here_ and she's really _doing_ this. "I'll have backup."

"Just make sure your backup doesn't accidentally arrest me." She takes another sip. "We'll be at the Corcoran Gallery at midnight. _Don't be late_; I can only stall for so long."

"All right." And then, "Thanks."

"Don't thank me just yet." She slides out of the booth, pushing her sunglasses back down.

Her lipstick stains the rim of the coffee mug.

* * *

Enjolras doesn't explain to Combeferre and Courfeyrac how he knows to wait at the Corcoran Gallery, and they don't ask. Anonymous tips come in all forms, and any lead is better than no lead.

Gueulemer doesn't go down without a fight; it takes the combined efforts of all three men to take him down. Out of the corner of his eye, Enjolras sees a figure in black melt into the shadows; by the time Gueulemer has been tazered and tied up, there is no trace of Éponine.

"I wonder who he was standing watch for," Courfeyrac muses, hauling the man into the back of their car.

"Whoever it was, they didn't leave any traces," Combeferre notes, checking for fingerprints. "They're good."

"I wonder why they chose such a horrible watchdog, then," Courfeyrac laughs.

Enjolras laughs right along with him.

* * *

She delivers Brujon to him in a similar fashion, and his dignity with the bureau is restored.

He returns home from drinks with the guys one night, happy and relieved that they aren't making cracks at his masculinity anymore, when he closes the door and has the immediate sensation that something in his apartment isn't right. The hair on the back of his neck stands up and an unfamiliar smell hangs in the air.

Quietly, he pulls out his pistol and peers into the kitchen, then, finding it empty, creeps into the hallway. The spare room he uses for an office is empty and looks the same as it did before, as is the bathroom. Which means…

He kicks open his bedroom door, gun at the ready. Éponine smirks back at him, a cigarette in her hand. "Nice place you got here, Agent."

"What are you doing here?" He doesn't take the gun off her.

She drags on her cigarette. "I can get you Babet on Monday."

"And you broke into my apartment to tell me this?" he asks incredulously.

She shrugs. "It's certainly more private than the café, wouldn't you say?"

He can't exactly argue with her logic, so he drops the gun. "Where can I find him?" he asks, defeated.

"We'll be having lunch at the Four Seasons with some benefactors for our imaginary organization tomorrow. It should be easy. I'll slip off to the ladies' room and you can take him away while I'm powdering my nose." She says it teasingly, but Enjolras isn't laughing.

"You don't regret any of this, do you? You're just going to keep taking money from people."

She leans back in his chair, her smirk fading. "What do you suggest I do? This is the only life I know."

"You could reform."

She laughs harshly. "In prison? I don't think so."

"Sooner or later, you're going to get caught."

"Not if I stay one step ahead of the game." She stubs out her cigarette on a plate he left there the night before and, with lightning speed, lunges at him. She knocks him flat on his back, pinning his wrists down on either side of his head. "Like that."

He pushes with his upper body and flips them over, trapping her beneath him. He's about to make some arrogant remark about being one step ahead of her when she leans up and presses her lips to his. He's so caught off guard that his grip on her wrists slackens, and she reaches up to wind her fingers through his hair. After a tentative moment, he returns the kiss, a soft moan escaping as she arches into him.

Without warning, she uses the fingers wrapped in his hair to wrench his head upwards and she bashes his head into his bedpost. He falls in a crumpled heap, out cold.

"And like that," she murmurs, reaching into his pocket. She pulls out his handcuffs and loops him to his bedpost. "Until next time, pretty boy." She presses a kiss to his cheek and disappears out the window.

* * *

The arrest of Babet goes off without a hitch, and if anyone is suspicious of Enjolras's anonymous tipper, they don't dare say so when they've been such an enormous help.

"We've taken out almost half the problem," Javert says in a debriefing. "If your anonymous friend can get us Claquesous and Montparnasse, Thénardier won't have any of his loyal lapdogs to help him out anymore."

"What about his family?" Joly asks, and Enjolras tries not to look too interested.

"They've been part of his operations for years, but they're hardly a threat without the rest of Patron-Minette. We'll close in on him soon enough."

* * *

He wakes up in the middle of the night to the smell of cigarette smoke.

"I hope you're not planning on making this a habit," he grumbles, sitting up.

"Why? Afraid one of the girls you bring over all the time will get jealous?" she teases. She drags on her cigarette. "Montparnasse is in town."

If he wasn't awake before, he is now. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. My father sent him to help me finish up my business here before we go underground."

Enjolras considers this. "So he's panicking?"

"The FBI keeps getting to his lapdogs, of course he's panicking." She blows out a long stream of smoke. "We'll be at the National Gallery tomorrow night. You'll want to bring back-up; he's smart and quick, and he's very good with a knife. I'll try to keep him there but I can't promise he won't get away."

"That's reassuring."

She blows out a puff of smoke in irritation. "Do you want him or not? This is the best I can do without making him suspicious. He's not dumb like the others."

"No, you're right…thanks," he mutters.

She stubs out her cigarette with a sigh. "I don't know if I can get anyone else to you; I'm supposed to join my family after this, and even if I got away, it would be hard to convince Claquesous to leave my father."

He absorbs this. "So…this is the last time this…is happening?"

"I'm afraid so." She hesitates. "It was nice knowing you, Agent Enjolras." And with that, she disappears through the open window like a shadow passing through the night.

He lies back and tries to go back to sleep, but the smell of her cigarettes stays with him for the rest of the night.

* * *

Montparnasse does not go down without a fight. He and Éponine manage to elude the team Javert has graciously assigned to Enjolras and jump in a sleek black car. The agents tear after them, chasing them up and down side streets. The pair abandon the car in an alley and Enjolras's team catches Montparnasse trying to scramble up a high chain-link fence. Éponine, unsurprisingly, is nowhere to be found.

As soon as Montparnasse is tucked away in a high-security cell and all the proper paperwork has been filed, Enjolras trudges home. The others go out for celebratory drinks but Enjolras can't muster up the energy. He's tired, and he doesn't think it's just from the chase. He's just locked the door behind him when he hears noise from the bathroom.

His fingers flex for his gun by instinct, but he knows who broke into his apartment. He swallows down his heart, which feels like it's risen into his throat, and pads down the hall to the bathroom.

She's rummaging around in his medicine cabinet; he hovers tentatively in the doorway, but she barely raises her eyes to him.

"Where do you keep your peroxide? I cut my leg and it hurts like a motherfucker."

"Here." He reaches up and pulls out the bottle, along with a package of cotton balls. "I thought you weren't coming back." He motions for her to sit, tipping the bottle of peroxide against one of the cotton balls.

"I didn't know where else to go." She puts down the toilet seat and sits, hissing as he presses the cotton ball to her leg. "And I couldn't exactly walk into a CVS in a catsuit."

"Maybe a Walmart." He dabs gently at the cut, wiping away the blood with one hand and holding her leg in place with the other. "How did you get away?"

"Just barely. But then, I've always been better at climbing fences than Parnasse."

He tosses the cotton balls in the trash and returns the peroxide to the medicine cabinet, pulling out a large band-aid in its place. "Well, my team recognized you; they'll be looking for you for the next few days."

"Good thing I'm getting out of the city tomorrow."

He feels an odd sort of stab in his chest. "Tomorrow?" he asks nonchalantly, getting up to wash his hands.

She shrugs. "Yes. We figured it wouldn't be safe to stay here, and my family wants me to be with them when we go underground."

He stares at the water running over his hands. "Oh."

She cocks her head. "Are you all right, Agent?"

"Yeah." He turns off the faucet and reaches for the hand towel. "Yeah, I'm fine."

She stands up. "Well…I guess I'll be going."

"Yeah." He swallows. "You should go."

But she doesn't move, and neither does he. They just keep standing there, staring and waiting.

He opens his mouth to say something, although he isn't sure what yet, and suddenly her arms are around his neck and those red lips are pressed to his. His hands catch her waist, surprised at first and then pulling her into him—almost as if he's trying to take some part of her and keep it with him for when the rest of her leaves.

They stumble into the hall, where she yanks his shirt over his head. By the time they fall onto his bed, they are tearing at the last remnants of their clothes.

"Now," she murmurs as he moves over her, red lips curling into a smirk. "Why does this look familiar?"

He moves inside her and they both groan, and soon the room is full of sighs and muttered French.

* * *

After, when they are spent and curled up in the bedsheets, he asks about the girl behind the warpaint.

"I never knew this life was wrong," she murmurs, rubbing her foot up and down his calf. "My parents owned a hotel when I was young—a casino. They took money from people every way they knew how, charging for this and for that. And they got me to con people out of their money; it's hard to say no to a little girl."

He strokes the soft skin of her back, reveling in having her here in his arms for once. "What happened to the hotel?"

"My father owed some important men a lot of money, and they took it from us. We moved into a bad neighborhood in Paris where we could barely afford to pay rent. I conned money out of people like I did at the hotel, and I taught my brother and my sister to do it when they were old enough." She stops rubbing his leg. "A couple years later, my father met Claquesous, and they got involved with some local gangs, doing odd jobs, trading on the black market, that kind of thing. The rest of the Patron-Minette got involved and we just followed along. We became richer than we were when we had the hotel. It wasn't until I was eighteen that I realized how illegal it all was. And by then my brother and sister were involved."

"You have a brother?" he asks, surprised. He's only ever heard of Éponine and Azelma.

"Gavroche. He's thirteen. He's smart; maybe too smart for his own good. I try to keep him away from all of this."

He sees the ache in her eyes. "You care about him a lot, don't you?"

She nods. "And Azelma. I practically raised them; I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to them." She swings a leg over his hip, pulling herself closer to him. "I want them to have a chance at a normal life, and they're never going to have that as long as my parents are around."

"We can take care of them," he says softly. "We can put them in a witness protection program, give them new names and new lives…"

"While I rot in prison with my parents and everyone else I ratted out?"

"It doesn't have to be that way."

"But it will be." She shakes her head. "I'll give you my parents and Claquesous, and then I'm taking Azelma and Gavroche and I'm running far away."

"Send me a postcard, wherever you go," he half-jokes. The other half of him is serious. He wants to know that someday, somewhere, she will think about him and care about that memory enough to send him a cheesy postcard of a sunset.

"Why? So you can keep tabs on me?" she jokes back, her lips curling in a smile.

He shrugs. "Maybe I want to be the one to break in your home unannounced."

She rolls on top of him, dropping a trail of languorous kisses along his neck. "Just remember, Agent Enjolras," She sits up to straddle him, her hips rocking against his, "that I am always one step ahead of you."

* * *

When he wakes up, the morning sun is filtering through the blinds and she is gone, the rumpled sheets the only reminder that she was here at all.

* * *

Javert personally leads a team to Morocco. After half an hour of FBI agents firing on the compound, Thénardier finally surrenders himself, his wife, Claquesous, and the few loyal disciples who stayed with them.

"Looks like his kids are already gone," Combeferre notes after doing a sweep. "Most of the clothes are missing from their closets and I can't find any suitcases in their rooms."

"Probably no use looking for them now," Enjolras says as nonchalantly as he knows how.

Combeferre glances at him out of the corner of his eye. "It's lucky that your contact was able to help us find Thénardier even after he'd blocked all communication from the outside world and holed himself up in here."

"Mm-hmm," Enjolras says noncommittally.

"It's even stranger that they've been able to get all the members of the Patron-Minette except Thénardier's daughters, isn't it? Especially with the oldest one—Éponine, isn't it?—right in town." He saunters off with a knowing wink.

* * *

In D.C., Javert commends Enjolras for all the hard work he's put into taking down the Patron-Minette.

"Of course, I know your…anonymous friend helped," he adds. "But if it weren't for you, those dirtbags might still be out there."

"Thank you, sir," Enjolras says honestly.

"I heard you're taking a couple weeks off," Javert continues. "Resting after your lucky streak?"

"Yes, sir, thought I needed a break."

"And where are you taking your break, if I may ask?"

Enjolras smiles and glances at the postcard taped to his computer. "Guernsey."

"Oh? Do you have friends there? Family?"

"A little of both."

Attached to the postcard is a Polaroid of Éponine, a girl who could be her twin, and a boy with sandy-blond hair and piercing blue eyes. They are all in bathing suits and standing ankle-deep in water, arms around each other and laughing. On the back is a red lipstick mark.


	12. jump right

Another prompt: This was for "This Modern Love" by Bloc Party. Lots of fluff. Enjoy!

* * *

Éponine sits back, stretching out the stiff muscles in her back. "I don't want to write this paper," she whines. When Enjolras doesn't respond, she starts kicking his chair.

"You'll be done in a few weeks," he points out. It hits them both and he smiles at her. "Jesus, I can't believe you're _graduating_."

"That makes two of us. I didn't think I was gonna make it." She hesitates, glancing at him. "Although having so many tutors lying around certainly didn't hurt."

He grins. "Remember when Marius first brought you in?"

She lets out a harsh laugh. "Yes. To join his 'study group'. And the only one studying was Combeferre."

"Poor Combeferre," Enjolras says fondly. "You know, I really hated you back then."

"The feeling was mutual."

"You were so _obnoxious_. And you thought you knew everything. You've grown up nicely since then."

She smirks. "I would say you _were_ an arrogant asshole then, but, well, you still _are_…"

He throws his balled-up napkin at her and she ducks out of its way. "I'm very mature, thank you."

"Uh-huh."

"Will you two stop flirting? It's distracting," Grantaire complains from where he's trying to work on an art project.

Enjolras blushes at the idea, but Éponine smirks. "Why, R, are you jealous?"

"Incredibly," the other man sighs in a forlorn way.

Éponine gets up and flings herself dramatically in his lap. "Ah, quit your whining; you know I love you."

"Then help me analyze this _fucking_ surrealist piece."

They put their heads together, and Enjolras can't help feeling a pang of jealousy. He knows that out of all the Amis he _could_ be jealous of (and none of them are really Éponine's type), her roommate is fairly far down on the list. But then again, so is Enjolras.

Combeferre takes Éponine's empty seat and leans in. "I need to ask you something."

Enjolras raises his eyebrows. "Shoot."

The other man glances at Éponine, still in Grantaire's lap and talking animatedly about his surrealism project. "Do you have a thing for Éponine?"

_Yes. Yes but I can't tell her because she'll never talk to me again. _Enjolras schools his features into an expression of nonchalant surprise. "What? No. Why would you think that?"

Combeferre shrugs. "You just sort of acted like it for a while there."

Enjolras shifts uncomfortably. "I mean, I think she's extremely attractive, but…she's my friend."

Combeferre watches him for a long minute. "Okay. So it wouldn't bother you if I asked her out?"

_Fucking_… "Uh, no. I, uh, didn't know you liked her like that?"

Combeferre shrugs again. "I wasn't sure, but I haven't got that much time left to figure it out, have I?"

He frowns, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, she's graduating soon, and who knows if she'll stick around here or go off to find something better…it's sort of now or never, isn't it?"

Enjolras wants to curl up somewhere and die. Instead, he forces a smile, which is a thousand times worse, and says, "Well, good luck, man."

"Thanks." Combeferre gets up and returns to his table with Courfeyrac and Jehan; a few minutes later, Éponine comes bearing two coffees.

"Because you're so great," she says, setting the coffee down in front of him with a kiss to his mop of curls.

He wants to pour the scalding coffee all over himself.

* * *

If he's completely honest with himself, he never planned on doing anything about his feelings for Éponine. Every time he's thought of a good reason for them to be together, he's thought of a million more why they wouldn't work. Mostly, he doesn't want to ruin their friendship. If he asks her out, he just knows that things are going to change; she won't want to be around him as much anymore, and he doesn't think he can handle that.

He never considered that someone else would swoop in.

Almost a week goes by and Éponine, who he sees in person or texts on a daily basis, makes no mention of Combeferre. He starts to let his guard down…maybe Combeferre wasn't really serious after all…

On Thursday, Éponine comes over so that he can help her with her thesis. They end up ordering Chinese and watching _The Incredibles_.

"Combeferre asked me out today," she says, fishing for the last of her chicken.

He freezes in the middle of slurping up a noodle. "Oh yeah?" he asks as nonchalantly as possible.

"Yeah." She pauses. "I said yes. I mean, it's _'Ferre,_ you know? At the very worst, he's good company."

He licks his lips. "Yeah, I guess that's true." Fucking Combeferre.

She's quiet for a long moment. "Do you…do you think I should've said no?"

He really, _really_ doesn't want to be having this conversation right now. "I think…that if you like him, you should go out with him."

He can't look at her; if he did, he would see a flicker of disappointment in her eyes. "Yeah." She turns back to the screen. "Yeah, you're right."

* * *

He tries to promise himself that he's not going to be that weird friend, but the suspense is killing him on Friday night, and around one in the morning he sends her a text.

_How'd the date go?_

He's cursing himself for his own stupidity and awkwardness when his phone buzzes—she's texted back.

_It actually went really well? He wants to hang out on Sunday. Do you think I should?_

His heart sinks.

_If tonight went well, you should go for it._

He throws his phone across the room. It buzzes with her reply a minute later, but he can't bring himself to read it.

* * *

She does hang out with Combeferre on Sunday, and goes out with him the following Friday night. And Saturday night. And even goes out on the Wednesday after that.

"You're seeing a lot of him," Enjolras says on Thursday when she comes over to work on homework.

She shrugs. "I guess."

He hesitates. "Do you like him?"

She shrugs again. "Yeah. But I don't know if I want to keep seeing him."

He tries to squash the feeling of victory. "Why not?"

She thinks about it. "I just…I don't know. I don't know if we're _right_ for each other, you know?" She peers at him. "I don't know if _he's_ right for _me_."

_I'm right for you._ He sighs. "I'm gonna be honest with you…Combeferre is probably the best guy you're ever going to find. He's literally perfect."

Her face is expressionless. "So you think I should stay with him."

"I think you should do what you want, but I'm also letting you know that you're never going to find someone who will treat you as well as he will." And it's true—as much as Enjolras cares about her, he's not perfect, and Combeferre is. Combeferre can give her what she deserves.

She fiddles with the hem of her pants for a long moment. "For some reason, I was hoping you'd say something else."

He furrows his brow. "Like what?"

She gives him a small smile. "I don't know."

* * *

"Just so we're clear," Grantaire says, frowning over his beer. "This girl that you've been in love with for _months_ comes to _you_ asking for relationship advice, because she _doesn't think_ she wants to keep dating the guy she's seeing now, and you tell her to _stay with him_?"

"That would be accurate," Enjolras says moodily.

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?"

"Do you want me to go in alphabetical order or chronological?"

Grantaire shakes his head. "You could've told her he's not right for her, you could've gotten her out of there and taken her for yourself!"

"I'm not going to steal Combeferre's not-girlfriend," Enjolras snaps. "Besides, who says she wants to be stolen at all?"

"She might like to be stolen away by _you_ if you presented the idea to her," Grantaire points out.

"I doubt it."

"Well, not if you're going to sulk about it." He takes a swig of his beer. "Look, at the very least, you should tell her how you feel. No, shut up. You're just going to torture yourself pretending you're not in love with her, and pretty soon you're going to have to watch her walk down the aisle to another man and it's going to suck. You owe it to yourself to tell her and she deserves to know."

"Yeah." Enjolras considers. "Yeah, you're right."

"And in other news, water is wet."

* * *

"And that's a…cumulonimbus?"

"Cumulus. Cumulonimbus are much bigger."

"I thought they were the puffy ones."

"Cumulus are puffy, and cumulonimbus are like the giant puffy ones."

"Oh." Éponine glances at Combeferre, gazing serenely at the sky. "How do you know all this?"

He shrugs. "I like knowing things." He rolls onto his side and links his hand with hers. "Are you having fun?"

"Yeah." She smiles at him. "I've never gone cloud-gazing before."

He hesitates, running his thumb over her knuckles. "And…are you sure you made the right choice being with me?"

"That's the third time you've asked me in the last hour," she laughs. "Why?"

Without looking up, he says, "Well, I guess it's for the same reason you've called me Enjolras three times in the last hour."

She sits up. "Oh my god. I…I _did_?"

He nods, sitting up as well. "Yeah."

She buries her face in her hands. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," he assures her.

"You must hate me so much."

"I don't hate you." He gives her a bitter smile. "You really like him, don't you?"

She hesitates before giving a mortified nod.

"Have you told him?"

She makes a frustrated noise in her throat. "No, but…I don't know, I thought it was obvious."

Combeferre actually laughs. "Ep, this is _Enjolras_ we're talking about. He has to have everything spelled out for him."

She doesn't say anything because really, what is she supposed to say at this point?

"You should talk to him," he says quietly. "I think you'll both be a lot happier."

She raises her eyes to his. She wishes she could sink into the earth. "I'm sorry."

"You can make it up to me by breaking Enjolras's self-imposed celibacy."

She smiles. "Friends?"

He smiles back. "Friends."

* * *

She runs to Enjolras's apartment, the soundtrack to every romantic movie she's ever watched roaring in her ears as she braces herself for the confrontation about to come. She doesn't know whether to make a speech or to simply throw herself at him and save the words for later. To hell with it, she decides as she runs up the stairs to his apartment—she'll just wing it.

She knocks on the door, breathing hard with her exertions and excitement for what is about to come.

Only nothing comes.

She stands at the door for a good two minutes before she realizes he's not coming. She knocks again, waits, and still no response.

She walks home, her limbs feeling like lead. Of _course_ this would happen to her.

She pushes through her door, ready to put on pajamas and curl up on the couch—except Enjolras is sitting on her couch, watching TV with Grantaire. "Éponine!" he says, perhaps a bit too eagerly. He stands up, jamming his hands in his pockets.

"What's going on?" she asks, her heart beginning to pound.

"It's Sunday night; _Game of Thrones_, remember?" Grantaire says.

She can't help the surge of disappointment. "Oh, yeah."

Grantaire looks between the two of them and stands up. "I'm going to…food…something…yeah," he mutters, disappearing into the kitchen.

"I need to tell you something," Enjolras says as soon as Grantaire is out of the room.

She takes a deep breath. "I need to tell you something too. But you go first."

He clears his throat and pulls his hands out of his pockets, jams them in again, reaches up to scratch his ear, and forces his hands so far into his pockets it's as if he's trying to imprison them. "I…um…I don't really know how to say this…"

"If you don't say it, I'll say it for you!" Grantaire bellows from the kitchen.

"_Shut up, R!_" they shout simultaneously.

She turns back to Enjolras. "What is it?"

He takes a deep breath. "I love you. I have for a while. I haven't said anything or made a move or anything because I like having you as a friend too much to risk scaring you off. And I know I've been telling you that Combeferre is the perfect guy for you—and he is—but if we're being honest I want to punch a wall every time I think about the two of you." He pauses. "So, what were you going to say?"

She grins and wordlessly flings her arms around his neck, pressing her lips to his finally _finally_. His hands hold her waist, his fingers slipping underneath her shirt and skimming the bare skin there.

It's only when they hear loud crashes and clanks from the kitchen—Grantaire trying desperately to warn them he's going to reenter the room—that they pull apart.

"What about Combeferre?" Enjolras asks, breathless.

She presses a kiss to his jaw. "We broke up. On the condition that I break the vows of chastity you took when you entered law school."

He smirks. "I think that can be arranged."

She reaches up to kiss him again and, stumbling, pulls him into her room. The door snaps shut firmly just as Grantaire reenters the living room with a beer. He stares at the door and blinks.

"…okay, but you guys are missing the season finale!" he shouts. When there is no answer, he shrugs and takes a swig of his beer. "Well, if you're sure."


	13. help me help you

A/N: Another prompt: This time it was: "I'm gonna rescue you, so you can rescue me too. Make it a rendezvous." - rescue song, mr. little jeans.

* * *

He wakes up to the sound of boots marching down cobbled streets. A not-very-distant memory stirs of gunpowder and blood and he cries out as phantom bullets pierce his chest.

A cool, wet rag is pressed to his sweating forehead; he opens his eyes to see hollow eyes staring back at him.

"It's all right, m'sieur; you're safe," she murmurs.

He remembers now. She dragged him away from the barricade, the stupid girl, when he should have died with his friends. He was ready to die.

"Leave me alone," he croaks, closing his eyes before he can see the hurt on her face.

The door slams shut behind her.

* * *

He doesn't get out of bed, not even when Mother Hucheloup comes into his room and begs and pleads with him to try. He just stares at the ceiling and wills some higher power to strike him down.

Éponine tries nursing him back to health even when it becomes obvious he has simply given up. She spoons broth into his mouth and changes his bandages and even tries to make pathetic attempts at conversation.

He doesn't put up a fight, but he doesn't try to help her, either. He never asked to live.

When her own scars heal, Mother Hucheloup lets Éponine start working in the café. She only works a few hours of the day—there aren't many customers with most of the café's previous customers dead or in prison, and Gibelotte and Matelote can easily take care of those that remain—and Enjolras strongly suspects that she's afraid to leave him.

So he becomes cruel to her. He mocks her, spits out the food he knows she takes pride in making herself, pushes away her helping hands when it's time to change his bandages.

She leaves in tears more than once, but he doesn't back down. He won't let her waste her life on him.

* * *

Summer putters out into autumn, and Enjolras still lies in bed day after day. Mother Hucheloup has long since given up on him, simply allowing him to take up space in her garret as one might allow an ugly piece of furniture inherited from a beloved relative.

It's a sweltering September night when Mother Hucheloup leaves to nurse a fever-struck Gibelotte back to health. He tosses and turns in the heat—it would be easier to sleep if there was a breeze coming in, but he needs Éponine to open his window.

He's starting to drift uneasily off when a series of muffled screams come from down the hall. He sits up, his stomach turning cold.

"Éponine?" he croaks.

The noises don't stop and it sends a rush of adrenaline he hasn't felt in three months surging through his veins. Fleeting images of blood seeping across a shirt too big for her pass through his head and he forces himself out of bed, stumbling across the floor. His legs cry out in protest, having lain still for far too long, but Éponine's cries are louder. He pushes himself out of the room and down the hall, scrabbling onto the wall and forcing his legs to move.

He grabs her doorknob and nearly topples into the room. She's crouched in a corner of the room, clutching a blue piece of fabric and sobbing into it. Her eyes grow wide at his entrance, and he realizes with a pang that she's afraid of him.

"Are you all right?" he grunts, clutching the bedpost for support.

She swipes at the tears still falling from her eyes. "I went to the Elephant today," she says thickly. She holds up the blue piece of fabric and he realizes that it's a small jacket. "He used to sleep there. The boys took most of his clothes, but they gave me this." Her voice catches. "He would've been eleven next month." A strangled sob escapes her throat and she buries her face in the jacket again, her shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs. He stumbles towards her and kneels on the floor before her, reaching for her, but her head snaps up and her eyes flash.

"Don't you touch me," she growls, a savage noise that's more like a wild animal than a girl. "I don't want pity from anyone, but especially _you_."

He bows his head because he cannot meet her glare. "I'm sorry," he whispers. _I'm sorry I killed your brother. I'm sorry I killed my friends. I'm so, so sorry for everything._

"Not as sorry as I am," she hisses. "I wish I'd never pulled you from the barricade. I wish I'd left you there in all your bloody glory. I wish I'd never woken up." She swallows down a sob. "I wish I was a student like you so I could find a word big enough to tell you how much I _hate_ you for everything you did."

"I don't think there are any words," he admits.

She shoves his chest, knocking him back, and rains punches down on his chest, stomach, his jaw. And he sits there and lets her because he deserves this and much, much more.

"Come on, fight me!" she howls. "You coward! You won't even fight back!"

Without warning, she collapses against him, sobs wracking her small body. He wraps a tentative arm around her, pulling her into him; it is all the encouragement she needs to bury her face in his chest, her tears dampening his nightshirt.

When Mother Hucheloup returns in the morning, they are curled around each other on the floor, a child's jacket clutched to Éponine's chest.

* * *

He helps her help him after that. He lets her pull him out of bed and onto his feet, and none of it feels a bit right, but he owes her this much.

She gives him reasons to get out of bed every day. She needs him to help her peel potatoes. It's cleaning day and she can't reach the high places. She needs help with the laundry. She needs him to run to the market and get her a pinch of this or a peck of that. And while he pretends to believe her harsh admonitions that she absolutely _cannot_ do anything until he helps her, he begins to heal. His legs, stiffened with disuse, regain their strength. His wounds fade into pink scars that will make fine stories someday.

He's running errands in the market one morning when he hears a name that stops him dead in his tracks.

"…Marius Pontmercy…"

He nearly falls over in his haste to hear the rest of the conversation.

"Isn't he the one who ran off to join those student revolutionaries?"

"Yes, God rest their souls. He survived somehow, and he's been in bed since June with a fever."

"Will he recover?"

"Well, that's just it—his fever broke this morning."

He doesn't hear the rest of the conversation, but it doesn't matter. Marius is alive.

* * *

He doesn't tell Éponine.

He plans to when he comes home, dumping the groceries she asked him to buy on the table. He's just opened his mouth to tell her when she turns to him, holding out the soup ladle. "Taste this for me," she commands, practically shoving the ladle into his mouth.

He chokes on the fiery hot liquid before nodding. "It's good," he rasps.

"Does it need more salt?" she wants to know.

"Maybe a pinch."

She dumps a generous portion of salt into the pot. "What would I do without you?" she says with a smile.

He hates her for a fleeting moment, hates this angel of shadows who pulled him from the grave and brought him back to life.

"You'd be a lot happier," he says sourly.

"I am happy, and you're getting surly, which means that you need to lie down." She waves the soup ladle at him. "Go on."

He goes to his room because he knows better than to argue with her by now, but he doesn't go to sleep right away. He pens a note to Marius—a small assurance that the other man will stay out of their lives.

It's for the best, really.

* * *

Several days pass and he forgets, if only briefly, that Marius exists in the world. Éponine fusses over him and finds ways to make him feel needed, and he tries to show her how much he is the needy one without saying so.

He returns from the market on a Monday, a sack of flour over his shoulder, and finds the garret empty. It's not unusual for Éponine to wander off on a walk, but she usually waits until he comes home, and it's bitterly cold outside.

Two hours go by, too long for a mere walk down the street. He bundles up and walks up and down every street he can think she might go to, but she isn't there.

It's strange, he thinks, that this girl who has wormed her way into his life and made herself his whole world can just walk out of it…as if she never even existed.

* * *

She does not come home the next day, or the day after that. Mother Hucheloup gives up hope.

"She's gone back to where she came from, no doubt," she sighs as she rubs her creaky joints.

"She wouldn't just leave," he says, but the words sound hollow in his throat.

* * *

Three days after Éponine disappears, she reappears just as suddenly. Enjolras is tending to the fire, alone in the garret, when she storms in and kicks him to the ground. "Get up, you _worm_," she spits.

"Éponine," he stammers, scrambling to his feet. "Where have you been—"

She shoves him back down. "If you thought you could keep me locked up here like some madwoman, some filthy _secret_—"

"I don't understand!" He rushes to his feet and moves to stand behind a table in case she tries to attack him again.

She pulls a folded piece of paper out of her bodice and flings it at him. "Do you want to read it yourself, or shall I recite it for you? I've memorized every word," she snarls as he picks it up.

It's a reply from Marius.

_My dear Enjolras,_

_How glad I am that you and Éponine survived that dreadful ordeal, and how fortunate that you heard of my recovery—I had thought all of my friends were lost._

_As for the favor you ask, I understand completely. If there is anything I can do for Éponine, please do not hesitate to ask. In the meantime, I trust you are taking excellent care of her; I can only imagine the burden it must be to look after someone whose mind is gone._

_Sincerely,_

_Baron Marius Pontmercy_

_P.S._

_I know you must have your hands full with taking care of Éponine, but if you can make it, Cosette and I plan to marry soon and we would be honored if you would attend._

Enjolras feels the blood draining from his face. Slowly, he lifts his eyes back to Éponine.

"Didn't count on me getting the post, did you?" she fairly growls.

"Éponine—"

She crosses the room in three strides and punches his jaw.

"I am not a madwoman you can keep locked away to, to wait on you and build up your ego." She swipes furiously at her eyes. "After everything I've done for you…"

He feels a surge of fire in his veins. "Everything you've _done_ for me? You dragged me from that barricade when I should have died there!"

"Yes, and I saved you!"

"I didn't ask you to save me!" he snaps, his head light and blood rushing in his ears. "I was meant to die with my friends! I was _ready_ to die!"

"You weren't ready to die, bourgeois boy. You were cowering in the upper room of the Musain like a scared little boy."

If she had slapped him it would have hurt less. He stands there, gaping at her, and a long moment passes before she drops her eyes.

"You keep saying you were supposed to die, but…you were still holding on when I found you." She swallows. "I almost left you…you were so close to dying. But you wouldn't let go. Death was trying to claim you but you hadn't let go of life yet. So I took you with me."

The room is uncomfortably still for a long moment. He remembers, now.

Éponine walks past him, moves into the hallway to her room.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs to the empty room.

* * *

He moves out of Mother Hucheloup's garret and into lodgings of his own. He begins working in a firm run by a family friend where he is put to work. He spends all day at the law firm and he enjoys it—it distracts him.

He knows, from wandering by the Musain once or twice a week, that Éponine still works there. He sees her mornings, afternoons, and evenings—without him to take care of, he supposes, she has all the time in the world to do whatever she pleases. She looks happy through the windows, and it is only the reminder that he made her unhappy that keeps him from wandering in.

* * *

Marius marries his Cosette in February and Enjolras attends the wedding. A year ago, he would have refused to go, but Marius is the only friend he has now.

The reception, an elaborate affair at the Gillenormand residence, fills him with a kind of bitterness. Women swirl by in enough fabric to clothe an entire family and gilded servants carry silver trays of champagne and colorful pastries and _this is exactly what he was fighting against_.

He moves out to the empty balcony and it's such a relief to breathe air that isn't dripping in perfume.

"I thought I saw you come out here."

He turns around and feels as if he's been punched in the gut. He swallows. "Hello, Éponine."

She smiles at him. She looks lovely with her hair pinned up. Her dress is simple but it suits her—no doubt borrowed from Gibelotte or Matalote. "You look well."

"As do you." He clears his throat. "What, ah…"

"What am I doing here?" Her eyebrow arches. "Marius invited me. He came to the Musain last month; he was very happy to see that I was doing so well."

Enjolras looks away. "I behaved horribly. I was…afraid."

"That's your story, isn't it?" she murmurs. "Afraid of death, afraid of another man…what else are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid you'll walk away and I'll never see you again," he admits in a quiet, cracked voice.

She hesitates. "I think…it might be better if I walked away."

His heart sinks.

"But," she takes a step forward. "I miss you. And things haven't been the same since you left."

He breathes a sigh of relief.

"I'm not saying I _need_ you, because I don't," she clarifies. "I've gotten along just fine since you left, if you want to know."

"I believe you." And he does. It's been him who's needed her all along.

"But it's a bit boring with only Mother Hucheloup for company," she goes on, taking another step closer. "And she doesn't laugh at my jokes the way you do. And—"

"Would you like to dance?" he interrupts, smiling for what feels like the first time in years.

She smiles back. "I thought you'd never ask."


	14. this is the story of how hard we tried

A/N: This was written for Thea Appreciation Week. The Division Street Riots mentioned in this chapter were a series of riots that took place in Chicago and were the result of years of systematic oppression of the city's Latino population; however, there are very few resources on the riots and I can say from experience that the riots are not taught in most schools in Chicago (thank you Daley family). Questions/comments/concerns? Shoot 'em my way!

* * *

She is ten years old when her family leaves the island of Culebra and gets on a ship to New York. They leave in a hurry with only one suitcase between them—the men her father owes a lifetime of debt to take everything else.

"What's in America?" her little sister asks.

"A new life," her parents say.

* * *

Their life is certainly new.

The apartment in New York is too expensive and too cramped for the five of them. The pipes creak and sometimes the water comes out brown. Cockroaches skitter across the floor and the walls are paper-thin. She can hear her neighbors laughing and fighting and crying and lovemaking and _she hates America_.

The rest of the city isn't much better outside their tin can of an apartment. Smoke chokes the air and there is always noise everywhere—from cars, from people, from the ships coming to Ellis Island. _Don't come here_, she tells them silently. _Go home, go back to Puerto Rico. There is nothing for you here._

She tries taking her brother and sister to a playground, but they are chased away by white faces twisted into sneers.

"_Spics! Dirty Spics! Go back to Puerto Rico!"_ they shout.

Anselma cries all the way back to their tenement and Gervasio trips on the hard concrete and Esperanza can't help remembering the way her sister used to laugh when they played in the water, how her brother learned to walk on the dirt roads by the orchards.

She decides right then and there that she's not going to let this ugly, dirty world get to her. She survived hurricanes and disease and gangs coming after her father's money—she sure as hell isn't going to let this lousy country be her downfall.

* * *

They stay in New York for almost a year before her father's friend tells them to move to Chicago with him.

"There are more opportunities there, and less noise," he says.

And because New York has given them nothing but headaches and dirty looks, they go.

* * *

She doesn't know what she was expecting, but it wasn't this.

Chicago looks just like New York to her, a mess of cars and people and skyscrapers itching for the clouds. Their apartment is a little bigger than the last one, but not by much; she shares a room with Anselma while Gervasio shares a room with the baby, Joaquín. He cries all night and Esperanza, the only one who bothers answering his wails, sits up with him and thinks _you and me both, kid_.

She and Anselma go to school in the _barrio_; she walks her to school every morning before she joins the throng of Puerto Rican and black kids walking to the junior high school. She likes the school well enough, and she likes the kids who go there about as much, but she dreads the walk home. Every day, a group of Polish boys stand on the corner near the primary school and shout her down.

"_Where are you going, _señorita?" They taunt.

"Cha-cha! Aí, carumba!"

"_Get on a boat back to Puerto Rico!"_

At first, she listens to her teachers and tries to ignore them. She takes Anselma's hand and walks past them with her head held high.

She can ignore the names, the dirty words, the warnings to go back to Puerto Rico _or else_. And she can ignore them when they pull her hair, and she can even ignore them when they try to shove her down to the hard cement sidewalk and only a passing man stops them.

But when they reach for Anselma, she's had enough.

She fights them until her knuckles bleed and her knees are banged up and her lip is split and her eye black, but she grins a savage, bloody grin as the last of them runs away.

"You look like the devil," Anselma murmurs in awe.

She looks at her reflection in one of the store windows and sees a creature from hell staring back at her.

"Maybe I am," she says.

* * *

The boys never bother her or Anselma again, and if anyone else in the _barrio_ makes the mistake of messing with either of the Torrez girls, Esperanza makes sure they don't make the same mistake twice.

Her father takes up odd jobs around the city, but most of his income is from his gang. Her parents bicker constantly—about the money he makes, about their apartment, about how they never should have left Puerto Rico. They stop long enough to have another baby—a boy, Pepe—and then they go right back to blaming each other for everything.

Esperanza raises her brothers and sister and herself. She teaches them English and how to fight back, because if there is anything America has taught her, it is how to adapt.

Anselma grows into a pretty _señorita_ with half the boys in the _barrio_ chasing after her. Gervasio, Joaquín, and Pepe, too restless for their cramped apartment, take to the streets; Esperanza sees them sometimes, scrambling up chainlink fences and fire escapes and leading their army of black and brown children to battle on the asphalt. They always come home with scrapes and ripped clothes. Sometimes they don't come home at all.

She doesn't blame them.

Esperanza doesn't have time for boys or playing in the streets. She sees the women in the _barrio_ and she knows what happens when girls graduate high school (if they make it that far). They marry their high school sweetheart and move into a tiny apartment so that they can pump out eight screaming brats and complain about it for the rest of their lives.

_Not me, never me_, she promises to herself.

She works hard in school and makes good grades; if she makes good grades, she can get a good job and move away from this cramped and awful place. She might even get into a community college and get an even better job and move even farther away.

And then someday, she can take the money she's made and go back to Puerto Rico, because it's both the furthest away place she can think to go and also the closest.

She makes it to her senior year of high school with the highest marks in her class.

"You should give yourself a break," Anselma says from the mirror, where she's attempting to flip the ends of her hair like the white girls on magazine covers. "Try spending a Saturday with a boy instead of a book."

"I can't get distracted," Esperanza insists.

She never counts on meeting Him.

* * *

The first time they cross paths is at the drugstore off California Avenue. She's picking up her mother's headache pills and buying milkshakes for her brothers when a group of Polish boys come in.

"_It smells like garlic in here_," one of them says loudly.

She keeps her eyes on her change. The stern outlines of presidents she memorized in school glint back up at her.

"_Smile for us, _señora! _Let's see that gold tooth!_"

"_Cha-cha!"_

"_Move along."_

Her eyes lift at this new voice. A boy from the _barrio_, a brown boy, with eyes like fire and a voice like thunder.

The Polish boys hesitate, their blue eyes flickering back and forth.

"_What are you going to do if we don't?"_ they finally ask.

"_It's not what I'll do—it's what _they'll_ do,"_ the boy says, gesturing to his friends in the back of the drugstore. There are eight of them, all glowering at the front.

One of the Polish boys spits on the floor before they skitter out the door.

"You shouldn't let them talk to you like that," he says, switching to Spanish.

She stiffens her back, sweeping her change into her purse. "I can take care of myself."

"Then why weren't you?" he demands.

She glares at him. He's dressed nicer than most of the boys in Lincoln Park and he wears his hair long like the Beatles. His English is very good with only the faintest traces of an accent—a college student, she realizes. Of course he wouldn't understand.

"There's no point; they don't listen," she says, making to leave.

He catches her arm. "Not being heard is no reason for silence."

Her lips curve. "I bet you're used to being heard a lot."

He releases her arm with a smile. "Every Sunday in Humboldt Park, by the Alexander von Humboldt monument."

* * *

She doesn't plan on going at first. She has more important things to worry about than attractive boys who tell her to stand up for herself. But her brothers want to play baseball in the park on Sunday and if she gets bored in the middle of their game and just happens to wander towards the Alexander von Humboldt monument…well.

She hears his thundering voice first. He stands on the ledge beside the water, a crowd of Latinos and Latinas gathered before him. He speaks of the corrupt mayor who gets paid off by the city's mobs, of the Polacks who force them out of their homes and businesses, of the police who arrest them and beat them for the color of the skin. It's a good thing, she reflects as a cop wanders by, that none of the cops speak Spanish.

When he climbs down from the ledge, his face flushed and his open collar damp with sweat, she applauds with the rest of the crowd. He sees her as the crowd thins and smiles, making a beeline for her.

"You came," he notes, running fingers through coal-black curls.

"I was in the neighborhood," she says, shrugging.

He laughs. "Well, what did you think?"

"I think…you use a lot of big words for this side of Chicago."

"Did you not understand some of my big words?"

"I understood all of them," she says with a twinge of annoyance, because if anyone's going to make her feel stupid, it's _not_ going to be this college boy with fire in his eyes and thunder in his voice. "I just don't think everyone else did. Not all of us go to a big fancy college."

He smiles and it bothers her that he can be so pleasant. "You don't have to go to a big fancy college to understand the sentiment behind the words."

She opens her mouth to argue, but one of his friends shouts, "Julián! Are you coming or are you going to flirt?"

His cheeks flush. "Wait a second," he calls back.

"So the big, impressive college boy has a name," she teases, trying not to let her own embarrassment show. She is not flirting with him. She's not, she's not, she's not.

"Yes."

"_Julián!"_

"I'm coming!" He backs slowly towards his friends. "Can I have your name?"

She hesitates. "Esperanza."

He smiles. "To hope."

"I wouldn't hope for much if I were you, college boy." And she runs away, her heart pounding.

* * *

She drags Anselma to go with her the following Sunday because she can't bear the idea of looking _desperate_. Her sister whines and puts up a fight until she explains that she's going for a boy.

"A _boy_?" Anselma says in great interest. "You didn't tell me you liked a _boy_!"

"I don't like him, I just want to hear what he says," she insists.

But it does the trick; Anselma walks with her to Humboldt Park and listens as Julián holds his audience captive. Esperanza can't help noticing that, though his speech is still as fiery as last time and his voice still thunders across the park, he doesn't use as many big words.

When he's done, he heads straight for her.

"Came back for more?" he teases.

"You took my advice," she notes with deep satisfaction.

He shrugs. "I'm a student; it's my job to learn." He glances at Anselma, who is watching the two of them with wide eyes. "And you must be…"

"I'm her sister," she volunteers, extending her hand. "Anselma. She wouldn't stop talking about you."

"That's a lie," Esperanza says at once.

"Really? What did she say?" he asks, smirking at her.

"I didn't say anything—"

"That's a secret," Anselma says craftily.

One of Julián's friends, a handsome boy Esperanza has seen around _la Division_ before, jogs up to them. "Julián, we're going to _La Musa_ now if you want to catch up with us later." His eyes catch Esperanza and she sees a spark of recognition. "Unless your friend wants to join us…"

"We're not friends," she tries to say, but Anselma digs her nails into her arm and talks over her.

"We'd _love_ to come, _wouldn't_ we, sis?"

She starts to say no, but she takes one look at the boy with fire for eyes and that's all it takes.

"Yes."

* * *

She meets all of Julián's friends from college—Ferran, from Spain; Carlos, the boy who recognized her from earlier (and who seems to like her sister an awful lot); Gaspar, who goes by R; Felipe, whose mother is Polish; Julio and Luis, who both seem to be dating a pretty girl named Marcela; and Bernardo, who has a loud laugh and looks as if he could take on everyone in the room. There is another member of their group, Marcos, but from the way they talk, he's never around anymore.

"It's that girlfriend of his," Bernardo says with distaste.

"From the way you talk, a person would think you don't have a girlfriend," Marcela snorts.

"My girlfriend doesn't exist when I'm with my friends," he says dismissively.

"Pig."

Esperanza can't get over it, how young and carefree all of them are. The twenty-somethings she knows are all married or trying to get there quickly. They all have jobs and spouses and a pack of screaming brats and a mountain of debt. But Julián and his friends don't have a care in the world. They're so…_alive_.

It hits her that this is what she wants. She wants a life where she's alive.

"But what happens when you graduate?" she asks Julián.

He shrugs. "We get jobs, we get married, we contribute to society. But we do it our way. The color of our skin doesn't determine what we should or shouldn't do. Who says a Puerto Rican isn't capable of being president of the United States? Who says a black woman doesn't know just as much as a white man?"

"White people say so," she reminds him. "We live in a white world, college boy."

He leans forward. "Yes, but the colors of the world are changing every day." He smells like rain and smoke and his thunderous voice has rolled into the memory of the ocean and she could drink him in forever if he let her.

* * *

Anselma joins her the following Sunday; she claims it's because she likes Julián's speeches, but Esperanza thinks it has something to do with the way Carlos smiles at her. The boys invite them to the house they all share on West North Avenue near the college. It's small and they sleep two or three to a room, but it's nice. They sit out on the fire escape and turn up the radio and drink beer (she hates it but she drinks it anyway because there's something right about the bitter taste).

Julián talks for a long time about the changes he wants to make to the world. Everyone gets bored and turns away after a while, but Esperanza keeps listening because she likes to hear the thunder in his voice.

"They keep finding ways to put us down, new ways to degrade us and pretend that they're making progress," he tells her, the fire crackling in his eyes. "But we're not stupid. People all over the world are figuring it out. One day, they're going to fight back. And then—"

"Julián," she says, because she is a little drunk and she likes the way his name feels on her tongue. "You haven't stopped talking about overthrowing the government all day. Let's talk about something else."

His eyes search hers. "I don't know how to talk about anything else."

She smiles. "Then don't talk."

She's not pretty in the way that Anselma is and she doesn't know how to flirt, but she knows that he makes her feel things she's never felt before and she knows that she wants to kiss those lips that never seem to stop moving.

It's an awkward kiss at first and she feels so stupid she wants to cry, but then he threads his fingers in her hair and tilts his head and _this is what thunder feels like_.

* * *

May passes in a whirl of balmy nights on the fire escape, with cold beers in her hand and a storm of a boy beside her.

The date of her graduation draws closer and closer, and where the idea of leaving high school and getting on with her adult life might have once pleased her, it now only fills her with dread.

"You could apply for the city college," Julián reminds her.

"Because they're accepting Latinas all the time," she says sarcastically.

Secretly, she wants to go, and she knows that she has a chance (if a slim one). She's smart, smarter than most of the kids in her school, and if she worked hard and got Julián to help her, she could probably get in. She even has the application sitting in a drawer in her desk at home.

But she wants even more to go home to Puerto Rico, and going to college will just hold her back. No, the sooner she can find work and save up money, the sooner she can get out of this dirty country built on a white man's dream and go home.

She graduates in early June and celebrates with beers at the boys' house. She feels alive and giddy, and if it weren't for Julián's arm around her waist, she would swear she could float to the moon.

He leans into her. "You should think about what I said."

"What's that?" she asks in a stupor.

"About college," he says patiently. "You could get in. I could help you."

Her stomach churns. "I don't know."

"Even if you don't, you should stay here. I know you want to go back to Puerto Rico, but…there's nothing in Puerto Rico anymore. Why do you think our parents left?"

The churning feeling gets worse. "They thought America would be better, but…it hasn't been better for me."

"You were a little girl when you left," he reminds her quietly. "What if you're just holding onto a dream?"

"And you're not?" she snaps.

"My dream is of the future. Yours is of the past." She can hear the gentle roll of thunder in his voice. "We hold onto what we need to, but when you try to go back…the Puerto Rico you remember leaving and the Puerto Rico you'll go back to are two different places, Esperanza."

"Just stop talking," she whispers, resting her head against the cool railing. She feels sick.

"I just don't want you to build up this vision that gets torn down," he murmurs. "Stay here, with me. We can work together, we can fight for change and—"

It's all too much. She doesn't want to hear it, any of it. She leans over and spills the contents of her stomach into the alley below. She becomes vaguely aware of the boys crying out and laughing in surprise before someone pulls her to her feet and jokes about how she's had too much to drink. Someone half-walks, half-carries her inside and lays her on the couch before everything turns to blissful darkness.

* * *

She avoids him for the next few days. She knows what he was trying to ask her, but that isn't what terrifies her. It's that she doesn't know what her answer might be.

She applies for jobs all over the city, from waitressing to maid services to secretarial positions. Anything to get away. But there are a hundred young, ambitious girls just like her all over the city, and she isn't surprised when the phone doesn't ring. She thinks of the college application stored in her desk drawer—and immediately shoves the thought from her mind.

The air conditioner breaks on the twelfth day of June, and not even the breeze from Lake Michigan can cool off the apartment.

"Let's get an ice cream or something," Anselma whines, fanning herself off.

"Take the boys with you," their mother grunts from where she's draped herself over the couch. "They're driving me crazy."

The boys run ahead of their sisters, leaping over each other and tackling each other as if it wasn't hot enough to melt your own skin.

"Either there's something wrong with them, or we've become Americanized," Anselma laughs. "Puerto Rico was much hotter, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Esperanza says without thinking. It sounds right, anyway.

There is a roar of sound on the next street—leftovers from the Puerto Rican Parade, she thinks. The boys run ahead to investigate and return a few minutes later.

"There's a riot," Gervasio pants. "It's us against the cops."

"Oh my God," Anselma gasps.

"Let's go," Esperanza says, turning around.

"We want to stay," Gervasio says stubbornly.

She shakes her head. "No, we're going home."

He grabs her wrist. "We'll be careful!" he promises. "And I'll look after the brats."

She hesitates. "Just…come home before long so I know you're all right."

His face splits into a grin. "We will!"

The boys tear down the sidewalk and whip around the corner and it's silly because they'll be fine, they always are, but she can't help the sinking feeling in her gut.

* * *

The riots last into the night with no signs of stopping.

Her father comes home long enough to get the revolver he keeps under his bed.

"This is a good business opportunity," he says before disappearing into the night.

She and her mother and Anselma fall asleep curled around each other on the living room floor, trying to shut out the sounds of sirens and screams.

Around one in the morning, Esperanza wakes up to someone coming in the apartment.

"Who is it?" she asks in a hoarse voice, the noise waking up her mother and sister.

"It's us." Joaquín and Pepe stand in the light of the lamp. Their clothes are torn and dirty and their hair is rumpled but they don't look hurt.

"Where's Gervasio?" she asks at once.

They glance at each other.

"_Boys_—"

"He ran into Julián and his friends," Joaquín blurts. "They're at their club on North Washtenaw. They're planning a strategy. He told us to go home where it was safe."

Esperanza could punch a hole in the wall. Instead, she gets to her feet and marches into her room.

"And where are you going?" her mother squawks.

"I'm going to bring him home." She goes to her bathroom and splashes cold water on her face to wake herself up. She changes out of her sweaty, rumpled clothes and into new ones. She pulls her hair into a ponytail before coming back out into the living room.

"You'll get killed out there," her mother warns.

"And yet, you're not volunteering to take my place." She takes one of the big knives from the kitchen and sheathes it in her back pocket.

"You can't go out there!"

Esperanza turns to regard her mother coolly. "And are you going to stop me?" When the other woman doesn't say anything, she snorts. "I didn't think so. Stay here and look after the boys. Lock the door and don't open it for anyone you don't know. You can manage _that_ much, can't you?" She doesn't wait for her mother's nod, just turns and marches out the door.

She was born in the middle of a hurricane. She raised her sister and brothers in a concrete jungle. She once fought off a pack of blond-haired, blue-eyed wolves. She has not given in yet, and she will be _damned_ if anyone tries to stop her now.

* * *

The city is full of chaos. Bottles break at her feet, rocks fly over her head, fires burn all around her, sirens shriek past her, but she does not stop once.

The Latin American Boys' Club is a flurry of activity, with boys about her age running frantically from room to room. She peers into each and finally finds the one full of familiar faces.

"Esperanza!" Carlos greets, his smile faltering when he sees her face.

"Where is my brother."

Gervasio peers at her from between R and Bernardo. "Sis! I didn't think you were the rioting type!"

"I'm not." Her eyes lock with Julián's. "I'm just here to take you home."

"He's safe here," Julián tells her before the younger boy can protest.

"Yes, the middle of a riot seems very safe," she says sarcastically. "Come on, Gervasio."

He opens his mouth, but Julián beats him to it again. "We know what we're doing, and we're not going to get your brother hurt."

"I don't think any of the people in the hospital right now _planned_ to get hurt; and yet, there they are," she snaps. "He's my brother and I know what's best for him."

"What, to hide him behind your skirts? You can't protect him forever, Esperanza."

"No, but I can damn well try. Come _on_, Gervasio!" she snaps, grabbing her brother's arm and dragging him out the door.

Julián follows them into the hall. "He's old enough to decide for himself. He wants to stay here and help our cause—"

"You and your cause," she scoffs.

"Yes, our cause," he fires back. "I know you don't care about it but you could at least _try_—"

"Of course I care." She releases her iron grip on Gervasio, who flees back to the room. "Why wouldn't I care? When my family left Puerto Rico, my parents promised that we were going to live a better life in America, and they _lied_ to me. I never knew there was something wrong with me until I came here. But the color of my skin, my accent, the food I eat—all of it means I'm something less than human. I'm _Latina_. _Puerto Rican. Brown._" She shakes her head. "I never want a little girl to be crushed the way I was when I came here. And if your change is the answer for that then of course I care."

"Then stay," he pleads, taking her face in his hands.

She smiles at him bitterly. "This is always going to come first for you, isn't it?"

He gives her an apologetic look. "It makes sense to me."

She takes a deep breath. "Okay."

* * *

They pour into the streets a few hours later. Rocks and bricks are hurled, bottles shattered, and a man they call Javier convinces them to turn over a police car and set it on fire. Julián looks at her from across the flames and she swears he was born from them. She smiles a bloody, savage grin back at him and holds Gervasio close to her.

When the cops come for them, she fights harder than she's ever fought before. She fights for her brothers, for her sister, for Julián and his stupid change, for the little girl she left behind in Puerto Rico.

The sun is rising when a cop raises his club to Gervasio.

She's more tired than she's ever been and she's already fighting off another club, but something pushes her. They can take her but _they will not take her brother goddammit not after everything she's done for him._

The man must be twice her size and weight, but she throws him off her and lunges for her little brother, shoving him towards the sidewalk.

Gervasio disappearing into a side alley is the last thing she sees before the club connects with her skull.

* * *

By the time she is released from the hospital, the riots are mostly over.

Her friends were either sent to the hospital with injuries like hers or were arrested on the spot. Julián was arrested.

She visits him every day that she can, and when he asks her to help organize the march against police brutality, she rolls her eyes but does it anyway.

She applies for the city college, and by the time Julián gets out of jail, she's already gotten her acceptance letter.

"Looks like you're stuck here," he says with a smile.

"Just until I graduate," she reminds him.

In 1968 he and his friends attach themselves to the Young Lords human rights campaign.

"You and your cause," she scoffs, twisting her engagement ring.

When Jose Cha Cha Jimenez makes the move to New York, he personally asks Julián to head up the Chicago Young Lords. She helps him, putting her social work degree to good use, and speaks out against the corrupt Mayor Daley. They fight against the gentrification that would force their families out of the _barrios_ and make room for white yuppies to build more condominiums. They join forces with the Black Panther Party and work for equality for Latino and African American people all over the city. Mostly, they fight for change.

"What do you say we take a trip to Puerto Rico?" Julián asks her one day.

Esperanza gives him a look over stacks of papers. "Don't be stupid, we have too much work for that."

They end up going to Puerto Rico a few years later as representatives of the U.S. branch of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. They bring their daughter, Sofia, and watch her swim in the sapphire-blue water of Culebra.

"Is it like you remembered?" he asks, taking her hand. "Your dream?"

"You and your dreams," she scoffs, standing on her toes to kiss him.


End file.
